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Steve McCabe

Steve McCabe

Steve McCabe is a British-born Mac consultant, tech writer, and teacher who now, for reasons that have but the most tangential connection to technology, lives in New Zealand. He writes about his adventures in New Zealand and blogs about tech. Steve’s first novel, Crash Landing, is now available in paperback.

Steve McCabe 6 comments

Around The World With Apple Pay

Steve McCabe tries to Apple Pay his way around the world, and turns up some interesting challenges along the way.

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FunBITS: Get the Most Out of Your iPhone’s Music with CanOpener

The powerful CanOpener app brings iPhone music to life with some clever sound-processing tricks.

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Charge Your Electronics Before Flying, or Risk Losing Them

If you’re flying into the U.S. from select airports, your uncharged electronics could be confiscated. Steve McCabe has the details on the TSA’s new policy.

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Pebble Smartwatch Puts Notifications on Your Wrist

The leading smartwatch isn’t perfect, but it has one major selling point — it actually exists, which is far more than can be said for the much-rumoured iWatch.

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FileMaker 13: More Polished but Pricey

The latest upgrade of the database stalwart is intriguing — particularly the new WebDirect feature for publishing databases on the Web — but expensive. A new subscription-based pricing plan may make the cost more palatable for those who want to take advantage of the new features.

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Investigating Siri’s English Accents

Siri offers American, British, Australian, and Canadian English choices, and changes the output voice to match. But does that mean you can switch among them freely? With testing help from his American wife and daughter, Steve McCabe, a Brit living in New Zealand, puts Siri’s voices through their paces and comes up with some intriguing results.

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WordPress as an Alternative to iWeb

There are Mac programs that can step in to fill the void left by iWeb, and there’s nothing wrong with using them. But Steve McCabe suggests a different direction — switching to the blogging and content management system WordPress, which offers features and extensibility that the iWeb/MobileMe combo could only dream about.

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iPhone 5: The Best Yet, But Still an iPhone

Steve McCabe casts a critical eye over Apple’s latest update to the iPhone, deciding that while the iPhone 5 is a very good smartphone and the best iPhone ever, its features don’t significantly change the overall experience of using an iPhone, especially in comparison to the iPhone 4S.

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WordPress as an Alternative to iWeb

There are Mac programs that can step in to fill the void left by iWeb, and there’s nothing wrong with using them. But Steve McCabe suggests a different direction — switching to the blogging and content management system WordPress, which offers features and extensibility that the iWeb/MobileMe combo could only dream about.

Steve McCabe 84 comments

Why Do Airlines Require Us to Turn Off Our Gadgets?

Despite recent developments, tech-toting travelers still have a number of rules to follow when they’re airborne. But do these restrictions make any sense, given that there have never been any reported accidents attributed to portable electronics on planes? Commercial pilot Steve McCabe says no.

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Comparing Music Streaming Services: Pandora, Spotify, and Last.fm

Steve McCabe takes the three best known online music streaming services out for a test drive. Which one might meet your needs depends on how you want to interact with music.

Steve McCabe 35 comments

Apple’s International Obfuscation

All Steve McCabe wanted was an in-warranty fix for a struggling iPhone. But Apple’s service advisors proved incapable of either helping with an international warranty repair or providing a straight answer to a seemingly simple technical question.

Steve McCabe 16 comments

Wrangling PDFs in 2012’s Web Browsers

PDF is the standard for layout-dependent documents on the Web, but the Mac’s three main browser options lack consistency in PDF handling, even after Adobe returns to the ring with Adobe Reader 10.1.3’s PDF plug-in.

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Facebook Tests “Highlight” Feature on Kiwis

Facebook users can now pay to highlight their posts, but only if they live in New Zealand.

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QuickTime Format Extender Perian to Cease Development

With the cessation of development and support of Perian, Mac users will eventually need to find a new way to play many otherwise unsupported video file formats. With choices including NicePlayer, UMPlayer, MPlayer, and VLC, which should you choose, when changes by Apple finally render Perian obsolete?