Thunderbolt Display, iTunes 12.4 keyboard shortcuts

(Image from Apple NZ’s Thunderbolt Display page)

Perhaps we’ll see an updated Thunderbolt Display at WWDC? Dennis Sellers writes that Apple’s long-in-the-tooth Thunderbolt Display may finally be getting an upgrade at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in two weeks. The monitor hasn’t been upgraded since July 2011. It’s time for a 5K version to match the gorgeous display of the 27-inch iMac.
According to Macrumors.com, stock is limited or unavailable at several Apple Stores in North America, Europe, Australia, and other regions. [The current model costs NZ$1899 whereas you can get 4K displays from other vendors for cheaper – Apple’s display is gorgeous and offers extra ports, but it’s pricey for its resolution.]

Use keyboard shortcuts to better navigate iTunes 12.4 — There are lots of other keyboard shortcuts you can use in iTunes to save time. Here’s on overview of the most useful ones.

Five Tip Friday ~ iTunes has its sidebar back (Mac)

iTunes 12.4 just arrived with the latest Mac OS update (10.11.5) and it adds the sidebar back.

1/ Where is this sidebar? Once you’ve updated iTunes to the latest version, you can click on the View menu at the top of your screen and choose Show Sidebar. Instead of the icons, you now have a drop-down near the top-left of iTunes’ window, from which you’ll select the type of media you want to view. To change what you’re looking at, pick a different option from there.

2/ Edit the media types — If you only need a few of those media types to show up, pick Edit Menu from that list then turn off the media you don’t ever use.For example, we don’t get TV shows via iTunes here anyway.

3/ Edit the Sidebar — With iTunes 12.4, you can also switch up what’s showing on the new sidebar. To do that, hover over where it says Library and click the Edit button that appears. Select or deselect as your heart desires. (These options change depending on what media type you’re configuring.)
When you’re finished, click Done in the upper-right corner.

4/ Visual changes — If you have been using the Heart button to tell iTunes which tracks you like best so you receive better music recommendations, it only appeared when you hovered your cursor above the track name. Now it’s an ever-apparent heart shape beside the now playing section at the top centre of iTunes. There are two ways to sort a current view: in the iTunes Menu Bar there’s the View>Sort By drop down menu, or you can have them always available on-screen using View>Show View Options (or Hide View Options). Up Next is easier too – the Up Next and AirPlay speakers operators are now much easier to find with their own dedicated buttons on the iTunes toolbar, to the right of the media description.

5/ New features — It’s now much easier to set shuffle or loop commands on tracks and you can see small icons denoting the status visible in the media description/playback in the iTunes menu bar. The Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, and other media items section at the top left of iTunes has been changed: now you don’t see the most popular items lined up beside each other, but you get a pop-up menu to help you navigate between media types. You can also edit these so you only see the fields you most frequently use.
The Forward and Back buttons at top right in iTunes now help you jump directly between pages you’ve been browsing, just like in a proper browser. This also means you can shift between Apple Music, your music, Movies and so on.

System updates, iTunes 12.4, Divya Nag, Cook meets Indian PM, MacFamilyTree 8, Buffet buys stock

Apple updates OS X (and iOS, watchOS, and tvOS) — Mac OS X 10.11.5 offers bug fixes and security enhancements. It will be available via the Mac App Store as a free update [although it wasn’t in the NZ App Store when I checked at 7:15am].

iTunes 12.4 for OS X — This sports a redesigned, simplified interface that’s designed to be simpler. It also hopefully resolves an issue that could cause music stored in iTunes to be deleted. iTunes 12.4 can be downloaded free via the Mac App Store. Macworld has a detailed rundown. [It’s not the full-on splitting of iTunes into components a là iOS apps that many, including me, crave; if that happens it will be at WWDC on NZ’s June 14th.]

Apple’s Divya Nag among the ‘100 Most Creative People in Business’ — Divya Nag, health tech lead at Apple, has placed second in the annual ranking of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2016, the annual ranking by Fast Company. Nag was named “for moving Apple into the doctor’s office.” Nag leads the team at Apple that created ResearchKit, an open-source developer toolbox that piggybacked on the company’s HealthKit framework.

Apple’s Tim Cook to meet with Indian PM Narendra Modi this week — After this week’s short stop in China, Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly due to visit India later in the week, the highlight being a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

MacFamilyTree 8 grows on you (in a good way) — MacFamilyTree, the genealogy software for OS X, has grown to version 8.0. A good app continues to get better, write Dennis Sellers: “MacFamilyTree lets you explore your personal family history and discover your origins, your ancestors and how your family has evolved over the course of time. Version 8 assists you entering your data and researching your family tree, offers dozens of printable and configurable charts and reports, and publishes your family tree as a book or web site with a few clicks.”

Micromat TechTool Pro for Mac, 60% off — Whether you have just one Mac or you’re the administrator of an office full of Apple’s finest desktops and laptops, you want to make sure those machines are running at their best. For a limited time only, the Apple World Today Deal Shop has a deal on the tool that the pros use: Micromat TechTool Pro for Mac [a very good tool]. You can get this powerful app for just US$39.99 [cNZ$59] , 60% off the usual US$99.99 [NZ$147] price.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway buys $1B of Apple stock — Investor Warren Buffett has taken advantage of Apple’s lowest share price in years, as new filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reveal Berkshire Hathaway now owns 9.81 million shares of Apple Inc.