By now you have realized that the latest version of the Workflow App no longer has deep integration to Google Maps. That's not too big a deal, since you can make do with the Workflow Open URLs function. Here's how...

Does your service provider differentiate between standard or "premium" IDD and "budget" IDD like mine does? Typically, the standard + international call prefix will default to the premium option, but to use the the cheaper option, usually via voice-over-IP (VoIP), one has to specific a different carrier-defined prefix, e.g. 12300 (I just made this up, check with your telco). I can't find a built-in way to do this on iOS... enter the Workflow App!

Apple has noted that a number of users may experience an issue with iCloud setting being enabled after upgrading to iOS 10.3. For me, I had quite the opposite experience, as iOS 10.3 finally enabled some iCloud applications that I had never gotten working for a long time!

Remember the time I waxed lyrical about using Google Sheets to track my stock portfolio? Well, it's going to be a "standard feature" of spreadsheets soon, with the introduction of the capability to retrieve stock data with today's update of Numbers on iOS (3.1) and macOS (4.1).

Here's how to retrieve and display the latest exchange rate for two currencies with the Workflow App (though one could just use Numbers on iOS or macOS too).

I've been playing with the Workflow.is App recently, and this one is pretty cool - using Workflow to scan and generate a QR Code with Contact information.

I love that iOS includes the Oxford Dictionary. I dislike that iOS has not provided a simple way for me to lookup a word, unlike on macOS, which has Dictionary. Here's the fix with the Workflow.is app!

Apple acquired Workflow today, and Workflow is now free in the App Store! Workflow (http://workflow.is)is a powerful yet simple rule-based automation tool. One pre-built workflow is to lookup your next calendar meeting, retrieve the location if there is one, and pop up directions in Maps - all this from a single button click.

If you are new to Workflow, here is a short tutorial to use Workflow to track travel expenses.

Since 2012, all apps on the Mac App Store must run in an app sandbox, which restricts access to system resources unless explicitly required. The secure sandbox isolates the app and defines access controls, protecting users from malicious code with undesired behaviour.

Here's how to setup a sandbox for an app downloaded from outside the Mac App Store.

It's the last day of 2016... Time for a bit of nostalgia! Over the years, I posted bits and pieces on Blogger, myByways.net (Microsoft), Google Pages and others. For posterity, I've transferred selected information about a HP notebook and desktop I used to have, but I doubt any of this information is relevant any more.

Want to extract files from a macOS installer package with a .pkg extension?

Wine 1.9.22 development (dated Oct 28, 2016) has been released! See the release notes for changes. Alas, I encountered errors trying to compile it "on top" of the Wine 1.9.21 installation, following the steps from my post Compiling Wine from scratch. I spent a whole day searching for the problem, and resolved it as below.

So a couple of days ago, I documented how I compiled Wine 1.9.21 with Retina Mode from scratch on macOS Sierra. After that I though I might as well figure out how to bundle all these files into a .app bundle, which Finder presents as if it were a single file.

I have been using WineBottler to run my favorite Windows applications in macOS. Here, I describe how I compiled Wine from scratch and configure for my MacBook Pro's Retina Display.

Here is my list of free, macOS apps that I have installed and use often. Many are also open source! When I first got my Mac I searched the internet for lists of useful apps but found most outdated. I decided to compile this list as part of a cleanup and "audit" of what's useful IMHO.

Recently I realized that the latest macOS Sierra 10.12 upgrade also updated Apache and PHP to newer revisions (2.4.23 and 5.6.24 respectively), but reverted to the default configurations. My previous post on Enabling Apache and PHP on OS X 10.11 needed a slight change too.

My Time Machine backups have started to take longer and longer to process and complete. I realized that excluding folders containing temporary, frequently changing and large files would quite dramatically speed it up.

I've been a long time iOS 1Password user, but recently started looking at alternatives. I discovered KeePass, KeeWeb and MiniKeePass, all open source.

I recently discovered an alternative to remote control my Windows 7/10 desktop PC, instead of using Microsoft Remote Desktop. This method requires a computer with a modern NVIDIA graphics card with GameStream and works with iOS and macOS using a client called Moonlight!

Safari 10 on macOS Sierra has a useful Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature to playback HTML5 videos in a small "always-on-top" window, just like on iPads with iOS 9+. To activate, just right-click a playing video and select Enter Picture-in-Picture. However, not all web videos seem to allow this, as they pop up their own menus without the PiP option. Here are two ways to try to enable PiP.