iOS Tip 79 - Perfect Pictures

Turn on Auto HDR. It takes three photos taken at different exposures, and combines the best parts of each one. You can make sure your iPhone does this every time you take a photo by launching the camera, tapping HDR, and selecting Auto.

iOS Tip 78 - What Week Is It?

Many people and professions rely on week numbers to plan events and schedule their time, particularly on a longer term yearly basis. By default, the iOS Calendar app does not show week numbers, but a simple settings change can make it so week numbers appear in the Calendar app of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

This is a really welcome change if you use week numbers for planning, and it’s quite easy to switch on or off to suit user preferences:

1 Open the Settings app and go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
2 Scroll down to the “Calendars” section of the preferences
3 Toggle “Week Numbers” to the ON position
4 Open the Calendar app into Month view to see the change

iOS Tip 77: Name Group Messages

When you create a group of iMessage users, you can name the group by tapping on Details. In the Details menu of the iMessage group, it says “Group Name.” After you enter a group name and hit Done, the conversation in the Messages app will show “You named the conversation [group name].” Bringing this feature to iMessage makes sense for keeping your group messages organized.

iMac Hard Drive Replacement Program

Apple has established a replacement program for some 3 TB hard drives in 27-inch iMacs sold between December 2012 and September 2013. These drives may fail under certain conditions. The program covers affected iMacs until 19 December 2015 or until the third anniversary of the original sales date, whichever period is longer.

You can enter your iMac’s serial number to see if it qualifies. If it does, you can get a free replacement at Capitol Macintosh. Apple also says it will reimburse anyone who has already paid for repair or replacement.

Before you have your iMac repaired, be sure to back up your data, preferably twice!

iOS Tip 76: Hide Your Photos

iOS 8 lets you hide photos from your camera roll. You can hide photos by opening a photo in the camera roll and pushing your finger down on it.
You will notice pop-up options that says “Copy” or “Hide.” When you tap on Hide, a message appears that says:”This photo will be hidden from Moments, Collections and Years but still visible in Albums.” Those photos will be hiddenunless you go to the “Camera Roll” or “My Photo Stream” folder under “Albums” in the Photos app.
If you want to unhide the photo from your camera roll, open it from the album that it is in and push your finger down on it until an “Unhide” option appears. Tap on “Unhide” and it will appear in the “Photos” streamagain.

iOS Tip 75: Filter out Unknown Contacts

A recently introduced feature in iMessage lets you filter out people who are actually in your contacts list from people who’ve just got hold of your iMessage email address and decided to ping you through it. From theMessagesentry in the Settings app you can activateFilter Unknown Sendersto keep these individuals in a separate column in iMessage (appropriately enough labelled Unknown Senders).

iOS Tip 74: Reduce Motion

Reduce screen motion on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

One of the coolest features of iOS is the use of a semi 3D-effect across almost the entire interface, including backgrounds, folders, icons, alerts and such. However, while nice to watch, this feature is really not that necessary and it can also consume quite a bit of battery life. Thankfully you can disable it completely: go to Setting>General>Accessiblity>Reduce Motion.

Where's My iPhoto

BEFORE you upgrade your computer operating system to 10.10.3 - update your iPhoto to 9.6.1. iPhoto 9.6 or earlier is not compatible with the current version of Yosemite (10.10.3). After updating to the current version of Yosemite you’ll see Photos (not iPhoto) on your dock. Photos is Apples new photo applications and is replacing iPhoto; when you launch Photos you’ll be prompted to migrate your iPhoto library to the new Photos.

The migration might take a while, depending on the number of pictures you have. Photos will migrate all your pictures, albums, slideshows etc. The only concern you might have is available space on your hard drive as after the migration you’ll have both an iPhoto and Photo library. Once the migration is complete you can delete the iPhoto library - freeing up the space.

Buy Photos for Mac: A Take Control Crash Course

This course will help you decide whether to transition to Photos right away, walks you through importing photo libraries from iPhoto and Aperture, explains the Photos interface and how you can organize your images, gets you going with the editing tools, and assists you with copying photos to iOS devices and Apple TVs. It also shows you how to create books, cards, calendars, and slideshows.

Particularly helpful is the explanation of how Photos works with iCloud, including using iCloud Photo Library to create a centralized photo library for all your devices and sharing photos with friends and family via iCloud Photo Sharing. While we now think it’s safe to turn on iCloud Photo Library, beware that it may overwhelm your Internet connection.

iPhone Tip 73: Camera Button

You can also use the volume buttons on the side of the phone as a shutter, making it feel like you’re using an actual point-and-shoot.