John Martellaro joins guest-host Bryan Chaffin to talk about whether having or not having Microsoft Office on your Mac is a relevant question in 2017. They also try and consider the state of the Mac product line from Apple’s viewpoint, and how the company might look at the importance of new hardware.
New Apple iPad Pro Spot Shows the Power of Apple Pencil to Sign Documents
Apple has a new entrant in its iPad Pro commercials where the company responds to tweets from real people. The new one is called No more printing, and shows how you can use iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to sign documents. It’s anchored around a tweet from @ROSESplease about printing personal documents on the company printer. I thought these spots were interesting when they launched, and found it interesting that Apple was interacting indirectly with social media and tweets from real folks. As time goes on, however, I find that I don’t think about these adds at all. That certainly wasn’t true with many other Apple campaigns. Then again, I’m not the target demo for these spots. This is the fifth spot in the series, making it likely they’re performing well for Apple.
TextExpander 1-Year Single User Plan: $19.98
TextExpander is one of our must-have Mac and iPhone utilities at TMO, and our friends at Stack Commerce have put together a deal on it. TextExpander expands snippets of text to much longer blocks of text. Your signature, a formula, addresses you have to type all the time, etc. It can also insert variables or things in your clipboard. Our deal is $19.98 for a one-year, single user license for macOS, iOS, and Windows. That’s half off regular price.
Appellate Court Rules Smartflash Patents Invalid, Saving Apple $533 Million
Apple won a significant victory in court this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court ruled three patents owned by Smartflash LLC were invalid, according to Reuters, a ruling that saves Apple US$532.9 million by negating a damage award.
Apple Rumors and Manufacturing, Tim Cook's Pipeline, and $AAPL - ACM 400
In this 400th episode of Apple Context Machine, John Kheit joins Bryan Chaffin to discuss rumors of iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy S8, Apple manufacturing, Tim Cook’s claim that Apple cares about pro users and creative pros in particular, the company’s supposed pipeline, and $AAPL’s record high valuation. Oh…and Nickleback.
Ditch Redmond With These Microsoft Office Alternatives for Mac
When many folks switch to Mac, they bring Microsoft with them, begrudgingly. They don’t realize the wealth of Microsoft Office alternatives out there, so they stick with what they know. Jeff Butts felt that pain, did the research, and has come up with some great choices for ditching Redmond altogether.
Apollo 11 Space Capsule Goes on a New Mission
NASA’s Apollo 11 space capsule “Columbia” took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to lunar orbit and safely back home in July 1969. The fiftieth anniversary of that trip is coming up soon, so the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is going to put the 13,600 pound capsule on display in four major U.S. cities starting late this year and continuing into 2019. This article at NPR has the story, the cities and the dates. (Image credit: Smithsonian.)
Be More Productive: Try a Different Keyboard
Last week Dr. Mac showed you how you could improve your typing skills for free at www.typingtest.com. But that’s only half the story. He also types significantly faster on his third-party keyboard than any keyboard Apple has made in the last decade…
iCloud: Configure a Public Calendar
Have you ever wanted to share a calendar with a bunch of folks? If so, creating a public calendar in iCloud might be the way to go, depending on how you feel about the privacy of doing such a thing. In this Quick Tip, we’ll go over how you’ll do it and how your recipients will accept your invites!
Working Smarter for Mac Users Preview with Bob "Dr Mac" LeVitus - TMO Daily Observations 2017-03-01
Working Smarter for Mac Users is the latest book from Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus, so he’s joining Jeff Gamet to give us a preview before it launches this Friday. Bob also shares a couple tips to help improve your Mac productivity.