Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas)

Apple tips, tricks, hints & hacks since 2013 / / Was a best-selling book, is now a website / Written by Macworld UK writer Keir Thomas.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

"Hide my Email" seems to be useless because it has the same issue as iCloud email... invisible deletion of what Apple considers to be spam emails, with zero user notification or choice. A very long running problem.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

I was today years old when I discovered the keys for a MacBook Pro and a Magic Keyboard are identical. Useful if a key breaks. But buy an old Magic Keyboard (or inexpensive set of replacement keycaps) and you could have a unique white-keyboard MacBook Pro.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

For over a decade I've used Google Workplace for email. It was free. And now... This I what I see if I login, rather entertainingly. Google is deleting the accounts if I don't pay-up. Ah well. Goodbye @Google! Let me know how it goes with that. https://t.co/s78Al9cH1d

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

It's worth adding—IE on Mac OS9 was no bad thing. It was a capable browser. I knew people who still used it well into the early noughties if they were amongst those that resisted upgrading to OS X.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

The end of a narrative curve. Once upon a time, Internet Explorer was EVERYTHING to Microsoft. It's why it invested in Apple in 1997—to get IE onto the Mac platform, too. Apple today owes its existence to the hated browser. https://t.co/5UibVTHxr3

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Frustrating: no reviewers discuss RAM in Apple products (RAM≠storage!). iPad Air 2022 doubles the RAM to 8GB, from 4GB in 4th gen model. That's a huge difference. It means it's likely to be useful 1 or 2 years longer. Similarly, iPhone Pros have more RAM than non-Pro models.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

@jasonhooper99 @Apple Hey, good point! I'll try it next time a phone disappears. (Although my experience of Find My isn't great—I tend to be told something was last seen around 12 hours ago.)

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

It’s 2022. Why hasn’t @Apple added a feature where you can make a family member’s phone buzz or make a sound when they’ve lost it in the house? Ringing it works, I guess, but surely there’s a simpler way?

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Me: Right-clicks word and selects Add to Dictionary.
Microsoft Word: Awesome! I’ll never bother you about that word ever again!
Me: Uses word with possessive apostrophe.
Microsoft Word: What the fuck is this?

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Wow! I had no idea that mouse/trackpad and cursor support for iPad is enabled for iPads as old as the Air 2! Just been trying it now with my old Magic Mouse and keyboard, and it works amazingly. Transforms the iPad into a backup laptop for work.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Weird that Photos on Mac has effectively full OCR now, so you can select text in pictures. But Preview hasn't got this. So if you open a PDF that contains scanned-in pages, there's still no way to select text.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

@Office365 Who allowed the insane new commenting feature in Word on Mac to leave the drawing board?

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Apple's got a very mixed-up online store at the mo. It's like nodody's told it about the supply chain issues. "Last-minute gifts!" it says. Hmmm, maybe it's time to replace my old iPad! Oh... Delivery February 2022. Still, apparently I'd get "Extended Xmas returns until 8 Jan".

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

I've been gifted a £50 App Store gift card. Which app or game that you've paid for have you thought was either essential or genuinely worth the money—no matter how high the asking price?

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

So tired of losing my AirPods. The case is a little bar of soap that wants to slip out of a pocket.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

@jasonhooper99 Yes. But you have to dig quite a bit in reviews to learn that the performance of the new “Pro” laptop is essentially the same as Apple’s entry-level laptop. Many reviews don’t even mention this.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

I'm so blown away by the fact the MacBook Pro 14in has essentially the same performance as the MacBook Air. Yet the reviewers nearly all say the 14in is the only choice. It shows how astonishingly well Apple controls the narrative around their products.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

When you get a new iPhone or Mac, @Apple should give you a personalised user guide based on all the cool stuff that’s arrived since you last upgraded. This could be via the Tips app: “Hey, now you’ve switched from an iPhone 8 to an iPhone 13 you should know about the following…”

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

@stroughtonsmith Intel 2019 MacBook Pro, 16GB RAM. First time I've seen this window in two decades of Mac usage.

[Mac Kung Fu (Keir Thomas) @MacKungFuTips]

Two decades using a Mac. Never seen this before just now. (16GB RAM, 2019 Intel i7 MBP).