Thanks to iCloud, syncing an iPhone with a Mac is a piece of cake. But Mac users who don’t buy into the whole “one vendor to rule them all” thing will find that syncing an Android phone with OS X isn’t quite as easy. That said, it isn’t terribly difficult, either, thanks to Google’s own cloud services.

Contacts

First, you must set up your phone to sync with your Google account. To make sure that this syncing is enabled, go to Settings > Accounts > Google, and tap your email address (it will be at the top of the screen, under the Accounts heading). Then confirm that the Sync Contacts box is checked.

Next, open the Address Book app on your Mac, go to Address Book > Preferences > Accounts, and choose On My Mac. You’ll see two boxes: one that says ‘Synchronize to Yahoo’ and another that says ‘Synchronize to Google’. Check the Synchronize to Google box, press Accept in the pop-up box, and enter your Gmail address and password when prompted. You should now see a small sync symbol in your Mac’s menubar. Click this symbol, and choose Sync Now from the dropdown menu.

Calendar

To sync your Android/Google calendar with iCal, open the iCal app on your Mac and navigate to iCal > Preferences > Accounts. Click the plus (+) symbol in the lower left corner to add a calendar to iCal. Leave ‘Account Type’ set to Automatic, fill in your Gmail address and password, and click Create.

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Although iPhoto for iOS isn’t quite as robust as its OS X counterpart, it’s a very capable image editor—and it can do a few cool tricks you simply can’t do on your Mac.

Straighten your photos

iPhoto for iOS allows you to straighten your photos in a few smart ways. The first is by auto-detecting a strong horizon line. Open iPhoto, choose a photo and then tap Edit. Now tap the Crop & Straighten icon in the bottom left. If the photo displays a white line across it with icons at either end, then that means a horizon line has been detected. To proceed with straightening, simply tap the arrow icon at the right.

Unfortunately, iPhoto can’t always detect a horizon line and that means you’ll have to make the adjustment yourself. The Crop & Straighten mode places a dial under your photo, and you can straighten your photo simply by dragging the dial left or right. A grid overlaid on your photo as you turn the dial, lets you straighten with visual cues in your photo.

What happens when your photo has no visual cues, but still feels off-kilter? iPhoto for iOS has one more strategy to assist you, and it’s a lot of fun. Choose a photo you want to straighten and then hold the iPad or iPhone up in front of you. Now tap the dial. iPhoto then calls on the gyroscope in your device to help you straighten the image. Simply tilt the iPad or iPhone to the left and right; as you do, you’ll notice that the photo remains upright. It’s helpful to tilt your head as you tilt the device so that you have a better sense of the final crop. Once you’re happy with the position of the photo, tap anywhere on the screen to lock it in.

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Reader Patricia Whitney has done the Bad Thing to her iPad and wonders if there’s a way to make it Good. She writes:

I dropped my first-generation iPad and now the screen’s colors are all wrong. Blacks are green and there’s a lot of “static” in all the images the iPad displays. Is there anything I can do to fix it?

In the days of classic sitcoms there was an old wheeze where Main Character A would suffer a bump on the head, causing said A to lose his or her memory. After the ensuing hijinx, the arrived-at solution was invariably to bean them again, thus restoring their memory. Those penning today’s sitcoms avoid such advice, understanding the litigious society we now live in.

I offer this stroll down the hoary path of television history to suggest that while our ancestors may have lived in a black-and-white world, they knew a thing or two about fixing misfiring systems. Take your iPad, for instance.

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You love your iPad, and chances are good that you need to use Microsoft Office for work. You have lots of options for editing documents created in Microsoft Word and Excel on your iPad, but what about the third major component of Microsoft Office, PowerPoint ()?

If you need only view a PowerPoint document, you can use almost any iOS app that displays documents (including Apple’s Mail and Safari). iOS can natively display, though not edit, PowerPoint (.ppt and .pptx) documents—but it shows them as a continuous scroll rather than as individual slides. You also won’t be able to see any animations, builds, transitions, or other special features. For displaying an existing PowerPoint presentation, a better choice is the free SlideShark app, which preserves most major PowerPoint features but still doesn’t allow editing.

When you need to edit a PowerPoint presentation or create a new one from scratch, your alternatives fall into three main categories: Keynote, a third-party office suite, or a virtual copy of PowerPoint for Windows.

Use Keynote

Apple’s $10 Keynote for iOS () is a fine tool for creating, editing, and displaying presentations. This version doesn’t have all the features of the desktop version of Keynote (), and if you import a presentation (whether created in Keynote on OS X or in PowerPoint), you may lose some important content. Say good-bye to fonts, transitions, and builds that aren’t available on the iPad, as well as audio and more. Even so, using Keynote is arguably the best way to edit a PowerPoint presentation on an iPad, because the app offers more powerful editing tools than any other native iPad presentation app does, and it has a better touchscreen interface than a virtual copy of Microsoft PowerPoint.

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Snap and share: It’s one of the most common things we do with our mobile devices these days. But sometimes you don’t want to broadcast a picture for the whole world to see. Here’s a quick overview of how Shared Photo Streams can help you with that.

Transcript

This is Macworld senior editor Dan Moren. Unlike Twitter or Instagram, iOS 6’s Shared Photo Streams make it easy to share photos with only a select group of friends or family, no matter what kind of computer, smartphone, or tablet they use.

To create a Shared Photo Stream, open the Photos app and tap the Photo Stream tab. By default, you’ll see your own personal photo stream, which syncs pictures shot with your iOS devices to all of your Macs and other iOS devices. (If you don’t, you may need to enable both your Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams under Settings -> iCloud -> Photo Stream.)

Tap the Plus (+) button to create a new stream. You’ll be prompted to give the stream a name and invite some friends via email—but don’t worry, if you forget somebody; you can always add them later. You’ll also see an option to create a Public Website—more on that in a bit.

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Your iPhone and iPad can speak aloud any text you can select. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable that feature, and how to type emoji symbols in your text, too.

Transcript

I’m going to show you a few quick fun things your iPhone or iPad can do to make text more interesting.

First, I’ll show you how you can make your iOS device read aloud any text you select. Fire up the Settings app, tap on General, scroll down to Accessibility, and then tap on Speak Selection. Turn it on, and then, if you’d like, you can play with different accents and speech speed. A good Australian accent always makes me say “crikey,” so I can’t resist.

Now, go into any app where you can type or select text. I’ll use the Notes app here. Select the text you’re interested in hearing by tapping and holding, and then tap the new Speak button that appears. Instantly, your iPhone begins reading the text you selected—in your chosen accent, if applicable.

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Congratulations: You’ve unwrapped, purchased, or otherwise braved wait times to pick yourself up a brand-new iPad or iPad mini this holiday.

But before you get to playing with your new device, you’ll probably want to set it up. Thanks to iOS’s step-by-step activation process, Apple’s made it pretty simple to get started; but just in case you need some extra help, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to your new iPad, activating it, transferring data from an older tablet or your computer, and some suggestions for exploring its new features.

Meet your iPad and iPad mini

Welcome to your iPad. Apple’s tablet packs in all sorts of magic depending on what model you’ve received: If you have an iPad with Retina display, you’re looking at a device with a 3.1 million pixel screen, dual-core A6X chip with quad-core graphics, a Lightning connector, LTE service, two cameras, and up to 64GB of storage; if you have an iPad mini, your device also has a Lightning connector, LTE service, cameras, and up to 64 GB of storage—but it runs a dual-core A5 chip.

Though the iPad mini is smaller and lighter than the iPad—weighing .7 pounds to the iPad’s 1.5—they both sport the same buttons and ports. We’ll walk you through these buttons, calling out differences where they appear.

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Struggling to read small text on your iPad mini? There’s a fix for that. Watch the video above, or read the transcript below:

The iPad mini is, of course, smaller than the 9.7-inch versions of the tablet. And while that makes the iPad mini more portable, the scaled-down screen size also means that, in some cases, text can look awfully tiny. Luckily, there are workarounds.

If you find that your email, notes, address book, or iMessages are too tiny to read comfortably on your new iPad mini, there’s a potential workaround you can try.

Launch Settings, tap on General, and then Accessibility. Next, tap the Large Text button and choose a font size.

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When you hit the road, it’s easy to get paranoid—especially if you’re carrying thousands of dollars’ worth of technology with you. You can alleviate some of your worries by taking security measures to protect yourself against someone running off with your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook.

Use common sense 

If you’re not used to toting a machine outside your usual rounds, don’t forget these precautions.

Don’t leave devices lying around: Don’t leave your laptop or other device on a table or counter at a coffee shop or other establishment and walk away or turn your back. Hardware is too easily snatched and too portable.

Don’t leave bags untended: Don’t walk away from a bag that holds your phone, tablet, or laptop. It’s simple for a thief to poke around without attracting notice, especially during the holidays when shops are busy.

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A visit to your local Apple Store during the holiday season can be maddening. The stores are overrun with other shoppers, there’s a mob around each gadget table, and waiting for your turn to be helped by an Apple Store employee takes eons. The walk-in line to purchase an iPhone 5 alone can take upwards of an hour, depending on how many people are in front of you. While we generally like the Apple Store’s “no register” system, it can be a real headache during busy periods.

This year, there are a few ways to avoid waiting in a long line. It just takes a little planning ahead.

Check yourself out

Bring your iOS device to the Apple Store, because the Apple Store app is a handy guide for holiday shopping. The app shows you where the nearest Apple Store is, lets you search for product availability at specific stores, and allows you to purchase items yourself.

The Apple Store app also has a feature called Express Checkout that lets you directly purchase items from the online Apple Store by quickly entering your Apple ID and password. Designate whether you’d like to pick the item up in a store or have it shipped. The app bills the card on file that’s linked to your Apple ID and will ship to the address on file as well; you can adjust these settings by selecting Edit in the app itself at checkout.

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Admit it: Your carry-on bag is stuffed with digital gear that you can’t bear to leave at home.  Your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook will keep you entertained while en route, and it’ll make a great navigation, research, and photo tool when you reach your destination. But keeping these devices charged when you’re constantly on the go or stuck in the air can be a challenge. Luckily, you can do a few things  to extend battery life and conserve power.

Invest in a battery case

A battery case for your iPhone extends the phone's battery life and keeps it safe from occasional drops and bumps. Most battery cases come with dock-connector plugs designed to pair up with the iPhone’s 30-pin (iPhone 4S and older) or Lightning (iPhone 5) connector port, which they use to deliver the juice to your iPhone. The only downside is that you can't use any dock-cradle accessories without removing the iPhone from the case.

One of our favorite battery charging cases is the Mophie Juice Pack Plus for the iPhone 4/4S ($100). It significantly boosts your iPhone’s battery life without adding too much weight (the company claims that the battery pack can actually add up to 125 percent more power), and you can still sync your iPhone using the included USB-to-Micro-USB cable. The Juice Pack Plus also has an on/off switch, so you can control when the case sends electricity to your phone.

Although the company promises one soon, Mophie has yet to release a battery case for the iPhone 5. uNu’s Ecopack for the iPhone 5 ($80), however, is a good option to use now with the latest iPhone. This battery case snaps onto your iPhone and doubles its battery life. The Ecopack comes in a variety of colors, and it purports to be eco-friendly because you can swap the battery portion of the device between cases, enabling the battery to last through several phone upgrades.

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I live in New Jersey, in an area hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy. Before the storm hit, my family took the traditional preparatory steps: We bought non-perishable foods, stocked up on water, took in our lawn furniture, and so on. But we also prepped our electronics for the coming storm—chiefly, by charging up our iPads, iPhones, and laptops.

We lost power on Monday, October 29, and it wasn’t restored until the evening of Sunday, November 4. Seven days without power is a long time. Of course, the biggest problems were the cold and the food spoilage. But with the Internet out, we also lost our home phone service (which uses VoIP). Nearby cellphone towers took a beating, as well; early on, our iPhones lost service completely. Eventually, AT&T and T-Mobile started pooling their resources to let customers get online, so phones linked to one provider would occasionally show carrier logos for the other.

Our phones eventually went from mostly useless to occasionally able to send SMS text messages and place heavily-distorted phone calls. But that came with a cost: Our iPhones struggled so mightily to make even those basic connections that they gobbled up battery power far faster than usual, while accomplishing far less. With limited options for recharging our iPhones, we had to do what we could to maximize battery life.

Preparing for the long haul

The first few steps were easy: We turned off Wi-Fi, so that the phones wouldn’t waste energy scanning for wireless networks that weren’t there. We turned off Bluetooth, too. (Both are top-level options in Settings under iOS 6.) We dialed down our Brightness settings as low as possible—though that option was slightly harder to stick with: Our iPhones worked far better outside, and in sunlight the darkest screens were hard to read. Very dark iPhones are also subpar makeshift flashlights, which we needed with the power out.

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Gaming has become an increasingly popular part of what we do with our Macs and iOS devices, and Apple finally realized that. In iOS 5, the company introduced Game Center, a social network service and set of frameworks that developers could use to handle common gaming-related tasks, such as tracking friends, accruing achievements, and playing multiplayer games.

Chances are you’ve encountered Game Center’s green felt background on one of your many Apple devices. Maybe it popped up when you were trying to start a game of Letterpress, perhaps you got a notification letting you know it was your turn, or maybe you were just wondering about that multicolored icon Apple dropped on your home screen. If it had your confused, don’t worry: Let us walk you through how to get the most out of Apple’s online gaming service.

What’s your handle, good buddy?

The first thing to do is to create a Game Center account by launching the service on either your Mac or your iOS device. Regardless of where you choose to create the account, it will be accessible on both iOS or OS X, and the options you’re presented with will be the same.

Among the most crucial decisions you make when creating a Game Center account is picking a nickname. This is the name you’ll be known by online, and it will show up in leaderboards and in multiplayer games. You’ll want to pick carefully—once you've created it, you can’t change your nickname without making an entirely new account, in which case you’ll have to go through this whole procedure again.

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The rapid adoption of Apple’s iOS 6 has been impressive. Initial estimates claim that as many as 25 to 35-percent of all iPhones were running iOS 6 within 48 hours of its release.

With all those users hammering away at the new OS, you can be sure that any bugs that survived Apple’s beta testing would soon be uncovered and publicized on the web. And that’s exactly what’s happened.

An excellent first stop to check for bug reports is the iOS section of Apple Support Communities. Two hardware-related items there especially caught my attention: short battery life and loss of Wi-Fi connectivity. Other iOS 6 problems, beginning with iTunes Match, extend beyond what I found at Apple’s forums.

Short battery life

A significant contingent of iPhone users report that their iPhone’s battery depletes unusually fast under iOS 6. While the majority of postings are from people moving up from an older iPhone to an iPhone 5, the symptom also appears to affect those upgrading to iOS 6 on an iPhone 4 or 4S. It’s still not clear what percentage of iPhone users have this problem; it’s certainly not a majority or we would be hearing a lot more about it.

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If you frequently use Excel to create and edit spreadsheets on your Mac, you may want to access the same files while you’re on the go with just your iPad. Although Microsoft hasn’t released an iOS version of Excel, you can still work with Excel files on your iPad if you’re willing to accept a few compromises.

View Excel files on your iPad

If you only need to view Microsoft Excel documents, you’re in luck; Apple’s iOS can display them natively. All you need to do is get the spreadsheets onto your iPad—for example, email them to yourself as attachments, or use an app designed for transferring and viewing documents, such as Avatron Software’s $10 Air Sharing, Good.iWare’s $5 GoodReader for iPad ( ), or Readdle’s $5 ReaddleDocs for iPad ( ).

Editing your spreadsheets is not quite as simple. Although several apps and methods exist, none of them has all of Excel’s features. As a result, you’ll face one or more limitations—for example, loss of formatting or a poor touch-screen interface.

Edit Excel spreadsheets with Apple’s Numbers

One natural option for editing Excel spreadsheets is Apple’s Numbers ($10,  ). It can import and export documents in Microsoft Excel format, and offers a powerful and easy-to-use environment for creating and editing files.

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When you want to edit Microsoft Office documents on your iPad, you’re not limited to Apple’s iWork, Google Docs, and third-party office suites. Three apps, in conjunction with their respective cloud-based services, let your iPad connect to a virtual Windows server running in the cloud and run the Windows version of Microsoft Office remotely: CloudOn; nivio; and OnLive Desktop. Here’s how they compare.

CloudOn

Opening up CloudOn, you don’t feel like you’re connecting to a remote Windows desktop. Instead, it looks like a file browser. CloudOn connects directly to your Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive cloud-storage account, and the app opens with a directory listing of those accounts.

Above the list of files are three icons: One for selecting your view (list, icon, or one that looks a bit like CoverFlow). The middle icon provides access to CloudOn’s settings, Help, and a tutorial. The third lets you launch Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can open an app from that icon or tap on one of your files in the file browser; in the latter case, CloudOn opens it in the associated app.

Once open, those apps look much like their Windows desktop counterparts: There’s the ribbon near the top of the screen, the document below that. Above the ribbon are tabs for the different ribbons (Paragraph, Insert, and so on).

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Following in the footsteps of Google and other services, Dropbox this weekend enabled two-factor authentication to bring enhanced security to its users.

While Dropbox was not among the services compromised in the well-publicized attack on Wired’s Mat Honan earlier this month, the service has suffered from at least one security breach in recent months. Adding two-factor authentication is one way to make your connection to the service—which for many users is an increasingly important part of their workflow—more secure.

As with Google’s implementation, Dropbox’s two-factor authentication relies on two separate elements: something you know (a password) and something you have (in this case, a separately generated code). While the combination of these two elements doesn’t guarantee your security, it does make it much harder for a potential hacker to gain access to your account.

The setup

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

I get lots of questions about some of the basics of iTunes. These are things that may not be that obvious, but are practical to know and can make your use of iTunes more efficient. Here’s a selection of some iTunes tips.

Q: I can’t seem to figure out which of the many playlists is actually playing. They are all listed on the left but I see no indication of which one is playing. How can I find out?

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Unlike the iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad was designed with the needs of typists in mind. The screen size, the large virtual keyboard in landscape orientation, and the support for external keyboards make the iPad a natural choice for word processing on the go. For many people, that means reading, editing, and saving Microsoft Word files. Even though there’s no iPad version of Word, you can work with Word files on your iPad if you’re willing to accept a few compromises.

Read Word files on your iPad

Just need to read Microsoft Word documents? All you have to do is get the documents onto your iPad; Apple’s iOS can display them natively. For example, you can email documents to yourself as attachments, or use an app designed for transferring and viewing documents, such as Avatron Software’s $10 Air Sharing, Good.iWare’s $5 GoodReader for iPad, or Readdle’s $5 ReaddleDocs for iPad ( ).

Editing your Word documents is a bit trickier. There are several good options, but all come with a qualification: they support only a subset of Word’s features. So, no matter which method you use, you may have to live without certain features—and in most cases, accept the loss of some formatting as well.

Edit Word documents with Apple’s Pages

One easy option for editing Word documents is Apple’s $10 iWork app Pages ( ). It can import and export documents in Microsoft Word format, and offers a powerful and easy-to-use environment for creating and editing files.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

While it’s possible to live with just one type of music file—AAC or MP3, for example—there are a number of different file formats used for music that you’re likely to encounter these days. Lossless formats—such as Apple Lossless and FLAC—and high-resolution files can be a challenge for iTunes users. Here are some questions that we’ve received about converting between different file formats.

Q: I often purchase high resolution files (88.2 kHz/24 bit, say), and while I can play these files through iTunes and my home stereo system without a problem, I cannot sync them to my iPod or iPhone because these portable devices do not recognize them. How can I create a separate standard resolution (44.1 kHz/16 bit) copy of these files for use in my portable devices within the same iTunes library?

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Wired writer Mat Honan fell victim to a brutal hack over the weekend. Through misplaced ingenuity and a smidgen of social engineering, hackers gained access to his iCloud account and wiped his iPhone, iPad, and Mac drives clean. The actual attack involved breaking into Honan’s Amazon account, and then using information found there to break into his iCloud account. Things only got worse from there.

Amazon and Apple clearly need to institute security policy changes to better protect their users. And Honan made mistakes of his own, most notably not backing up his Mac regularly. But the hackers’ initial entry point into Honan’s digital life was through, of all things, the “forgot password” functionality offered by Gmail. When they first plunked Honan’s email address into that form, Gmail displayed a redacted version of Honan’s MobileMe account: m••••n@me.com. Honan has plenty of “if only's” on his mind, but one biggie—to quote Honan’s story for Wired, is this: If he “had used two-factor authentication for Gmail, everything would have stopped here.”

(Note: Google calls it two-step authentication, but “two-factor authentication” is just as common a name. We’ll use them interchangeably.)

Understand two-step authentication

First, let’s clarify what two-step authentication actually means. In Google’s case, it works this way: If you enable two-factor authentication, when you next log in to your Gmail account, you’ll first proceed as you always do—by providing your username and password. But before you get to your inbox, Google will next demand a separate code.

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Editor’s note: Mat Honan has posted a full account of how hackers gained access to his accounts and wiped out the data on his devices. Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris told Macworld: “Apple takes customer privacy seriously and requires multiple forms of verification before resetting an Apple ID password. In this particular case, the customer’s data was compromised by a person who had acquired personal information about the customer. In addition, we found that our own internal policies were not followed completely. We are reviewing all of our processes for resetting account passwords to ensure our customers' data is protected.”

The future is now. Our devices are interconnected, and that linking where everything can access everything is wonderful. But it turns out there’s a dark side, too: All that connectivity makes it much easier for an attacker to compromise all our data, no matter where it is. Wired’s Mathew Honan learned this the hard way over the weekend, as a hacker not only gained access to his devices, but also wiped all the data from them causing a fair bit of mayhem along the way.

As Honan reported on his blog, he was hacked hard. And the attacker didn’t use complicated algorithms to brute force his way into Honan’s accounts. Instead, the hacker reportedly called up Apple’s technical support line, pretended to be Honan, and successfully provided answers to Honan’s self-selected security questions—the very ones Apple asks of all iCloud customers, to ensure that their accounts are secure. (We contacted Apple to confirm that account of events, but the company hasn’t responded.) [Update: Honan has said via Twitter that the hacker did not provide security question answers, but rather compromised the account in a different way.]

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

In this installment, I answer a number of questions on various topics: Podcasts, smart playlists, streaming audio, and what happens to your iTunes Store content when you’re gone.

Q: I would like to sync my entire iTunes Library to iTunes Match, but this doesn’t seem to be possible at this time. Unless I am mistaken, iTunes Match only syncs music, not podcasts, videos or iTunes U content. Is this true?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Among the many questions we’ve received about iTunes, a large number of them are about the iTunes Store. There are questions about iTunes Store accounts, Apple IDs, and using content from more than one account. Here’s a serving of questions and answers about working with the iTunes Store.

Q: My wife and I both have iPads, and both have separate iTunes accounts. It seems that there should be some way for one of us to download a book from the iBookstore to our iPad and then give the other access to that same book without having to pay twice. Is there?

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

Most of the Ask the iTunes Guy columns so far have covered music, and especially the confusing (and somewhat half-baked) iTunes Match. But iTunes handles more than just music: it manages ebooks, audiobooks, apps, and various types of videos. It’s time to dedicate a column to some of the many questions we’ve received about videos: movies, TV shows, and music videos.

Q: When I look at some TV series in the iTunes Store, I see that some shows say “HD: Includes 720p, 1080p.” How do I choose which version to download?

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Get it together

Apple’s $10 Keynote for iOS ( ) can import presentations made in Microsoft PowerPoint ( ) or in Keynote for OS X ( ), but in both cases you’re likely to lose a great deal during the import process. Say goodbye to some fonts, transitions, and builds that aren’t available on the iPad, plus audio and more. (Presenter notes are supported, however, whether created on the iPad or imported from a PowerPoint or Keynote for Mac presentation.) Therefore, when feasible, create your presentation directly on the iPad.

If you do use Keynote on a Mac, be sure to read Apple’s Best practices for creating a presentation on a Mac for use on an iPad, which guides you in selecting compatible templates, fonts, and other features. Once you’ve created your presentation, you need to move it to your iPad. Although the iOS version of Keynote supports iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud feature, which automatically syncs documents on all your iOS devices with Apple’s servers, the Mac version of Keynote still lacks integrated support for this feature. (OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will have access to iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud.)

Instead, you must log in to your iCloud account in a Web browser at www.icloud.com, click the iWork icon, click Keynote, and then drag your Keynote document into the browser window. After it uploads, the document will appear automatically in Keynote on your iOS device—but keep in mind that this process doesn’t eliminate the compatibility issues I mentioned a moment ago.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

While you can play music in iTunes, or on an iOS device, by choosing an artist or album—or even totally at random—playlists are what let you customize your library and your listening experience. We’ve gotten lots of questions about smart playlists, and here are some of the most interesting ones (plus a common question about displaying playlists in iTunes).

Q: How can I make a random smart playlist that limits the number of tracks by a specific artist?

Start by making a new smart playlist. Choose File -> New Smart Playlist, or press and hold the Option key and click the gear icon (the plus icon turns into that when you press Option) at the bottom-left of the iTunes window.

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[Ask the iTunes Guy is a regular column in which we answer your questions on everything iTunes related. If there’s something you’d like to know, send an email to the iTunes Guy for consideration.]

This installment is a bit of a grab bag. I look at a number of questions that have come up frequently dealing with metadata, sorting, and sharing.

Q: I ripped many CDs into iTunes and changed the genre to categorize my music in different ways. I now would like to be able to select a given album in iTunes and somehow reset the genre to the default information from Gracenote. Is there an easy to do this?

You can manually change the genre of any album. Select all the tracks, press Command-I, then type a new genre in the Genre field at the bottom of the window.

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