This month will focus on a few diverse subjects and another recipe.
Ever pick up your iPhone and it has zoomed in without you doing anything (that you can remember). Now if it’s really zoomed in, you can’t see to get to the Settings app to cure this. Really annoying. To reset you screen to normal just make a three finger tap on IOS to turn magnify on/off. Magic.
AirPods –
The new AirPods Pro are quite an improvement over the original pods. These have a much shorter stem and include new features such as noise canceling, transparency mode, better water resistance and improved EQ. They also include 3 sets of tip sizes to better fit your ear canal. You can set functionality for the devices to determine what a tap on a stem will do. i.e. alert Siri, skip to next song, etc. If you have headphones with noise canceling you know what that is like in airplanes and noisy places. Now you can enjoy that without large headphones. The Transparency feature is interesting. It is not a hearing aid, but allow you to turn it on and place your iPhone some distance away, say 30 feet, and be able to listen to a speaker. Sort of like a remote microphone. You can also control some features with an Apple Watch.
IOS 14 for iPhones is to be released soon and will have some major new features – Here’s a brief overlook. It will be able to be loaded on iPhones as far back as iPhone 6 Series and SE models too.
Privacy – you will be able to limit tracking and following your location – who needs to know your precise location to offer you weather forecasts. You’ll see a “Precise Location” toggle in apps and you can set this. Apps don’t need to know exactly where you are. If they know within a few miles, then that’s ok.
- A new home screen with the App Library.
- New Widgets on the Today view and home screen.
- A whole new Siri interface.
- Picture-in-picture.
- App Clips lets you use mini-apps on the spot.
- Compact calls – calls from the phone, FaceTime or 3rd party apps display in one place
- Major Messages improvements.
- Memoji updates.
- Maps improvements with recommendations on places to eat, shop and explore
- Pinned conversations
- Translations in up to 11 languages
- Home app with more features
- Improved Health app with sleep monitoring (on your Apple Watch)
- And more
Docking Stations and Hubs –
Now that many of us are working from home, you are probably thinking about getting a little more sophisticated so that you have more screen “real estate” and don’t have to squint at a small laptop screen. Some of you are working on desktops with large monitors so this article may not really apply to you. Docking stations and hubs are devices that allow you to plug peripherals into your laptop. Some have separate power supplies such as most docking stations and which allow you to charge your computer too, while Hubs often use USB ports for power. A Hub is a simple box that has many different ports such as: USB-A, USB-C, Ethernet, Micro/SD media cards, HDMI and others depending on your needs. Hubs generally plug into your laptop directly or with a cable and give you lots of other ports to connect other devices such as a large monitor, external drives, headphones, external cameras, etc. Popular Hub manufacturers include Satachi, Anker, Allfu, and many others. It pays to look around for pricing and features as well as ratings.
Docking stations are more sophisticated and sometimes are “dedicated” such as some Dell or HP products which have a proprietary plug on the bottom of some laptops that allow you to “snap” in the laptop to the station for a direct connection. This type unit also permits your laptop to be charged. Third party providers such as Kensington, Targus, and VisionTek offer them also and these connect with cables. Docking stations or “port replicators” may have the capacity to connect multiple HD monitors, professional grade cameras and microphones to make your life easier if you are making videos for a YouTube Channel, your clients or just need to see many documents at once on multiple monitors. Ports are available for other devices too such as printers, game controllers, a keyboard, your network and so on. Docking stations could have ports that are not available on your computer.
Did you know that if you are a Mac user and have an iPad, you can use the iPad as a second screen? See this link on how to do that. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380
Another way to get more screen use is to use the green button at the top of a window. If you click and hold the green button, you’ll have three choices: Full screen, Tile left or Tile right.
Hard Drives vs SSD (solid state drives)-
We all remember the days of floppy disks and the limited storage. Then came “hard drives” which are mechanical devices with spinning platters with magnetic coatings with read/write heads that find data. Floppies have headed to the boneyard and now each year Hard Dives (from Western Digital, Lenovo, and Seagate and others) become cheaper and cheaper. I recently saw a WD 1TB drive for $47 at Bestbuy! That’s a pretty amazing price Most of these manufacturers have proprietary software included to use to back up if you want to use what’s in the box.
These HD’s do have some plusses/minuses. Since they have moving parts, they generate heat, need a significant power source and eventually wear out or “crash”. The upside is that they are cheap compared to what the storage capacities are and most people use them for backups and archiving. They usually last 2-3 years. Couple you HD with some backup software like Time Machine on Macs or Windows Backup and Restore. For PC’s Other third party apps to handle the backup automatically include: Acronis, StorageCraft, Paragon, to name a few. You can also use cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive (Microsoft) also for back ups with some configuration required. Offsite or “cloud based drives” that handle your backups automatically with easy set up include: IDrive, Backblaze, and Carbonite. Costs vary depending on the service but are definitely worth it for peace of mind. I strongly suggest two backups. One is an external hard drive connected directly to your laptop/desktop and a SECOND method is a cloud based service. If you have a fire, flood, or theft and someone makes off with your computer and external hard drive you are *#$!!!, so the cloud based service will rescue you. It’s not a matter of if, but when your home backups fail or let you down some way. All electrical devices will fail eventually, and it will always be at the worst time. Lightning strikes anyone?
Still working on Shortcuts on IOS discussion.
Food you might enjoy –
If you have eaten at a Mediterranean restaurant you probably have encountered this popular dish.
Baba Ganoush |
Eight servings |
I like my Baba Ganoush super-smoky, and leave the eggplants on the stovetop for a good ten minutes, but for most people, that’s probably too much. Five or so minutes, until the skin gets a bit charred, is probably right for most “normal” folks. If you have smoked salt, you can use that to give it another hit of smoked flavor, too. You can also roast the eggplants in on a gas or charcoal grill using a low heat. Slice in half, length-wise, rub the cut side with olive oil. Monitor the cooking and do so until the flesh is soft. Start off grilling them with the cut side down and turn over a time or two.
3 medium-sized eggplants
1/2 cup (130g) tahini (sesame paste)
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt to taste
3 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
3 cloves garlic or more to taste, peeled and smashed
1/2 teaspoon chile powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
a half bunch picked flat-leaf parsley or cilantro leaves roughly chopped
½ tsp to 1 tsp of ground cumin, careful as too much can overpower the dish
- Preheat the oven to 375F (190C).
- Prick each eggplant a few times, then char the outside of the eggplants by placing them directly on the flame of a gas burner and as the skin chars, turn them until the eggplants are uniformly-charred on the outside. (If you don’t have a gas stove, you can char them under the broiler. If not, skip to the next step.)
- Place the eggplants on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until they’re completely soft; you should be able to easily poke a paring knife into them and meet no resistance.
- Remove from oven and let cool.
- Split the eggplant and scrape out the pulp. Puree the pulp in a blender or food processor with all the other ingredients until smooth. Or you can use a fork to mash them and leave more texture to the dish.
- Taste, and season with additional salt and lemon juice, if necessary.
Serve by drizzling with olive oil, perhaps some herbs such as a few dashes of paprika and with crackers, sliced baguette, or toasted pita chips for dipping.
Storage: Baba Ganoush can be made and refrigerated for up to five days prior to serving. It does improve in flavor too.
Thought for Today –
Compassion is language the deaf can hear and the blind can see. ~Mark Twain~
Next time: More on shortcuts, Asana – another powerful and popular project manager, looking more deeply at Getting Things Done and another recipe.