appleJAC Users Group

From the President's Desk-July 2019

The President's Report-July 2019

 

 

 

JustPlay: Nifty Media Player

a review by Tom Piper

Audio and video files have been playable on the Mac for over 37 years using a variety of programs. During this time, I’ve used Apple’s flagship iTunes and QuickTime Player, as well as DivX, RealPlayer, Elmedia, Plex, VLC and many others. Recently, I started using a great new player that is small and powerful.

JustPlay, from Electronic Team, Inc. is a simple media player that just play all video or audio files that I have. It easily supports MP4, AVI, MOV, SWF, DAT, MKV, MP3, FLAC, M4V, MP4, FLV, Blu-ray, and more. This little player comes packed with all necessary stuff to play everything.

Playback adjustments are flexible so I can set any playback speed, set the subtitle or sound delay, and can resume the playback immediately with the previously subtitles and soundtrack (even choose to start at a pause). If I loop the file, it will play continuously for any time I choose, including going frame-by-frame forward and back, and increasing or decreasing speed, screen size and aspect.

As if that isn’t already enough, JustPlay let’s me adjust brightness, saturation, contrast, gamma, hue, noise reduction and sharpness. The audio equalizer tunes the sound precisely  for volume, speed, audio delay, subtitle and 10 separate ranges, plus it will use presets for various types of music and spaces.

JustPlay is available at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/justplay/id1458004180?mt=12 for only $4.99 (USD). This is an amazingly versatile and responsive tool for media playback is easy to use with quality results.

 

Wrangle your calendar and reminders

by Joe Kissell, Publisher, Take Control Books   Dear MUG member,

I never cease to be amazed at the amount of power and flexibility hidden beneath the surface of Apple’s built-in apps. We’ve explored many of these (for example, Preview, Apple Mail, Notes, and iTunes) in Take Control books, and it’s always a delight to see readers discover new capabilities they never knew they had.

The Calendar and Reminders apps (found in both macOS and iOS, as well as in a more limited form in watchOS) are no different. They may look simple, but with a bit of digging, you can find a wealth of powerful, time-saving features. Scholle McFarland has done just that, and she shares her findings in a freshly updated and greatly expanded second edition of her book Take Control of Calendar and Reminders. The book now covers Mojave, iOS 12, and watchOS 5.

Scholle walks you through not just the basics of managing events and to-do items, but also how to deal with alarms and notifications, meeting invitations, shared calendars and lists, and location-sensitive to-do items. You’ll learn how to use Siri (and Siri Shortcuts) to interact with your calendars and reminders on macOS, iOS, watchOS, and even on your HomePod. You’ll also find solutions to common problems—and a huge number of clever, useful tips! You can:

● Buy Take Control of Calendar and Reminders now for $10.49 (cover price: $14.99) with your 30% MUG discount ● Get more info about the book

I hope you’ll find this guide as helpful as I have!