Apple Apps

Apple's new iOS 8 is great, and one of those great new features is Continuity. With Continuity, users of multiple Apple products can take a phone call on one device and switch to another on the fly. I typically leave my iPhone docked at the entrance to my house and then I work upstairs on my MacBook. When the phone rings, I have to make a mad dash to answer it. Now I can take the call on my iPad. And soon, with Mac OS X Yosemite, I can answer the phone call on my MacBook!

One of the great new features in iOS 8 is the ability to send an audio message. Sometimes it's simply a lot more convenient to make a quick recording than it is to type a message. Why not simply call the person? Because convention requires that we then engage in conversation. An audio message is more efficient. And the party you're sending it to can listen at his or her convenience rather than having to answer the phone.

One of the great features of recent versions of iOS is how deeply embedded sharing is. You can quickly share items such as photos and videos with friends, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Flickr, and more. In fact, you have so many options now that the screen that pops up when you tap the button for sharing can start to get cluttered. Fortunately, you can customize it.

A few weeks ago we published a tip explaining how to add an item to a specific list in Reminders using Siri. If you don't specify which list you want to add the reminder to, it will get added to your default Reminders List. But if you find yourself mostly adding items to a list that is not the default Reminders List, such as your Shopping List, why not make that your default list?

When you're in bed reading a really compelling book, you don't always want to stop just because it's late and your spouse wants to go to sleep. That's when you need the low-light Night theme in iBooks. It means you can finish the chapter without the glare of the screen hurting your eyes or disturbing your partner. 

Everyone likes movies. And no one likes wasting time on the lousy ones. So no doubt you check out the reviews to see what people are saying about it. Siri can help. Siri will not only let you find out what's playing at local theaters and play the trailer, but will also tell you how a movie is rated.

There are several hands-free ways you can answer a ringing iPhone while your hands are covered by bulky, hard-to-remove gloves. You could start by wearing touchscreen-sensitive gloves. Or using a stylus. Or plugging in a pair of headphones. But what if your gloves were chosen not for their touchscreen compatibility but for their ability to keep your hands warm while the polar vortex is in town? What if you don't have a stylus or a pair of headphones quickly accessible in your winter gear and you really want to take that incoming call? There's a simple solution; just be prepared for some funny looks.

Thanks to iCloud, you can create things like shopping lists or to-do lists in Reminders at home on your iPad and then access and edit those lists on your iPhone while you're out running errands or shopping. But what if you want someone else to have a copy of the list on his or her device and you don't want to use the Family Sharing Reminders list or that person's not part of your Family? Here's how you can share your shopping list with another person using iCloud.

Automatic exposure (which determines how light or dark our images should be) is so convenient and accurate most of the time, but then there are those times when we end up with  overexposed or underexposed images that make us cringe. After all, our cameras are pretty advanced, but it's still impossible for them to recognize when we want our focal point darker (such when shooting silhouettes) or lighter. 

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