Getting Started With the Mac

For iOS 18, macOS Sequoia

Intro

If you have multiple Apple devices, you may know that there are many features that allow them to integrate with each other to keep content up-to-date across all of them. In this guide, I will give an overview of how iCloud, the service that facilitates this interconnection, can help you manage and sync your content, as well as how it can help protect your privacy and security. The good thing about it is once you have a few things set up, features largely work automatically with very little additional interaction required from you, the user.

Terminology

iCloud is the Apple service that allows Macs and iOS devices to keep content in sync between them. By default, you get 5GB of free storage space, upgradable up to 12TB, to store data such as documents, photos, emails, contacts, calendars, and more. With any paid storage plan, you get several additional features marketed collectively as iCloud+.

In this episode, Tyler demonstrates the VoiceOver Text Checker on macOS, a feature that identifies common errors in typed text such as misspellings, repeated spaces, and misplaced capital letters.

This feature can be accessed via Keyboard Commander, and by default is mapped to the letter D. When in a text field, pressing this command should present menus for the types of errors identified in the text, such as misspellings, white space, etc.

For macOS Sonoma

Intro

If you’re coming to macOS from Windows, you’re probably used to either downloading apps from the Microsoft Store, or downloading an app package from a website and running its included installer. On macOS, there are several ways apps can be installed and uninstalled, which I will give an overview of in this guide. The good news is that whatever methods the developer has employed, the installation and uninstallation processes should seem very straightforward to you, the user.

In the first of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to get VoiceOver running on any Mac laptop or desktop.

These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.

In the second of a series of podcasts intended to help new users of VoiceOver on the Mac, David Woodbridge shows us how to use the Keyboard Helper feature in OS X to familiarize yourself with the keyboard layout and functions.

These demonstrations were recorded on a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard, but the procedure is still the same at the time of posting.

Intro

Each year in June, Apple previews the next major version of macOS, along with updates to its other software platforms, at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC.) At this event, Apple announces and demonstrates a select number of headlining new features, and makes a prerelease version available to developers so they can test the new software and provide feedback before the public release in October.

This is important because when substantial feature additions and changes are made to an operating system as intricate as macOS, many bugs will also be introduced. This can include issues with how third-party apps and accessories interact with the operating system, making thorough testing by developers crucial.

For macOS Sequoia

Intro

If you’re like most people, you likely have many online accounts with usernames and passwords. In this guide, I will describe how Apple Passwords, the password manager built into macOS and other Apple platforms, can help you create, use, and manage strong credentials for your online accounts.

While Apple Passwords is also available on iOS and iPadOS, as well as Chromium-based browsers, this guide will focus primarily on how to use it with Safari on macOS, in an effort to limit information overload. However, once you become familiar with Apple Passwords on macOS, you’ll likely find that it works similarly on other platforms.

Intro

Since 2005, I have used a variety of Macs, and have regularly used every version of macOS from Tiger to Monterey since then. Over that time, I’ve witnessed the various changes to VoiceOver, both major and minor, as well as how VoiceOver on macOS helped usher in a whole new world of mobile accessibility on iOS and iPadOS.

Today, with the Mac’s transition to Apple Silicon and the performance potential that it’s helped to unleash, it can be argued that the Mac is experiencing something of a renaissance. Indeed, as an AppleVis member, I’ve noticed an uptick in posts related to macOS, including from those who are potentially interested in buying their first Mac, those enquiring about how to complete various tasks on macOS, those experiencing issues, and others. No, I don’t have a hard number to back that up, just my observation.

Earlier this year Apple came under some criticism after a report by the Guardian on how Apple hired contractors to listen to a small percentage of anonymized ‌Siri‌ recordings to evaluate the responses with the purpose of improving accuracy and reliability.

In response, Apple promised that it would introduce options in a forthcoming update that would allow users to opt out of sharing their audio recordings.

Those options arrived with the releases of iOS 13.2, iPadOS 13.2, and macOS 10.15.1.

In this podcast, Tyler walks us through how to access and change these new options.

In this episode, Jonathan Simeone shows us how to add and remove items from the Finder sidebar on macOS.

The Finder sidebar is a list of folders and devices that can be quickly accessed from any Finder window or open and save dialog in macOS. You can choose which categories of items appear in the sidebar by choosing Finder > Settings, (or pressing Command-Comma) clicking the Sidebar button in the toolbar, and selecting the categories you want to include.

To add a specific folder, focus on it in Finder and choose File > Add to sidebar (or press Command-Control-T. To remove a folder, focus on it in the Sidebar and choose "Remove from sidebar" from the context menu, accessed by pressing VO-Shift-M.

In this podcast, Tyler discusses and demonstrates the Grouping Behavior options available for VoiceOver on macOS. These allow you to choose whether VoiceOver requires an action to interact with items in a content area (such as a scroll area) or a group (such as a toolbar):

The four available options are:

In this podcast, Jonathan Simeone shows us how to access and use the diverse emoji icon set on the Mac.

In this podcast, Carlos Taylor gives a walk-through of how to restore a single file from a Time Machine backup using VoiceOver.

Note: In macOS Ventura, rather than locating a backup by interacting with a slider, each backup is represented by a button in the timeline controls window; clicking this button selects the backup. Aside from that minor change, the process is still largely the same as it was at the time this podcast was recorded.

Written steps for how to do this are as follows:

In this podcast, David Woodbridge demonstrates how to use the Caps Lock key as the VoiceOver modifier key on macOS … either on its own or in conjunction with the Control and Option keys.