Apple’s iOS devices come preloaded with a handful of alert sounds that you can use for ringtones and, as of iOS 5, for text messages, voicemails, reminders, and more. But maybe you want something more distinctive: a snippet of your favorite song, a clip from a classic movie, the whoosh of a materializing TARDIS?
No problem. Using GarageBand () on your Mac, you can quickly turn any sound file into an alert sound for your iOS device; then you won’t have to check your phone every time you hear one of those default iPhone ringtones in a crowded café. Follow along with this week’s Macworld video tip to see how.
I like to listen to music while I work, but I don’t like needing to switch back to the iTunes app whenever I want to change tracks. I also have a bad habit of pausing music—say, when my boss calls—and then not realizing until quitting time that I’ve spent the rest of my day in silence, after forgetting to resume my tunes.
By using a tandem of Take Five () and SizzlingKeys (), I get the full playback control I crave, and the automatic un-pausing I need. I’ll show you how in this week’s Macworld video tip:
Sure, you can set your iPhone to chime when you get new mail. But if you get a lot of mail, like I do, it's not very helpful. What you really want is a notification when you get important mail from important people. So that's just what I created, using a few Gmail filters and an iPhone app called Boxcar.
If you get a lot of mail and use a mail service with server-side rules, such as Gmail, you can do it too. Let me show you how in this week's Macworld video tip.
The weekly Macworld Video returns! Starting this week, Macworld’s editors will provide a helpful video compatible not only with your web browser, but also your iOS device. In this specific video I show you how to use DVD Player to determine which is the correct main title to rip for the DVDs you own. Enjoy.
We’re gearing up for round two of our mega-roundup of iOS styluses here at Macworld; in the meantime, we’ve got a few quirky stylus accessories that didn't quite fit into a larger collection. The Woodees iPic Stylus is one of these outliers: From far away, the stylus resembles nothing more than your average guitar pick, but when you flip it around, you discover the Multi-Touch-enabled stylus nib hiding below. I’ve written up a full review of the iPic elsewhere on our website, but if you want to see it in action, check out this video.
In writing my review of the iPhone 4S I got to spend some time playing with the Siri voice-recognition engine. And so I made a video, so you could see it in person. It's embedded in the review itself, but I've also added it below as well as putting it in our (soon to be revived) Macworld Video podcast stream.
(Eagle-eyed readers will note a particularly unfortunate—albeit funny!—transcription error when the iPhone 4S tries to spell its own name. It was left in place in the interests of verisimilitude. Such is life in our science-fictional universe.)
It’s one thing to talk about iPad styluses; it’s quite another to see them in action. And so, in this Macworld video, I give a visual demonstration of the 12 styluses I reviewed elsewhere on Macworld.com.
