Our boys were fascinated with computers back when they bought the first PC from Radio Shack. I decided years ago that if I had any hopes of communicating with our sons who would become engineers and computer techies, it would be a “must” to keep up with changing technology. At age 64 I made the computer leap to my first Mac, and five years later, I keep discovering amazing new things that I can do on my Mac.
I just figured out this afternoon that I can easily send iMessages from my Mac to any iPhone. Now this might not be a big deal to you, but it really is for me.
IPhones are a big part of our family. Thirteen of us own iPhones—Don, me, all seven of our kids and spouses, and our four oldest grandchildren (pic is Kassidy, granddaughter # 5 who is in line for the next one.) IPhones abound in my extended family too. Even my 93 year old mother, Mary, uses her iPhone to call me from the nursing home where she lives.
Oops. I’ll blog another time about iPhones — back to this morning and my Mac. I googled to see if I could send text messages to phones from my computer since I am on the computer writing on my book most of the day (in theory). The answer was Yes! All of my kids way prefer a text for communication so I was in.
I set up my Mac to send text messages to iPhones and it worked great the first time. And then to my surprise, when one of my kids texted me back, the computer popped up a window and read his text reply to me while I was writing, so I didn’t even have to pause until I wanted to respond.
Only last week I discovered that by pressing the function key twice, I could dictate, and my computer would type out everything I was saying with a great deal of accuracy. Now that feature has come in very handy when I prefer to speak rather of type the words into my book draft. This feature especially helps me because in all reality, I am a speaker who writes, not a writer who speaks. Speaking out loud captures my message better than writing it. This dictation feature really helps me write from who I am.
I wonder how long I’ve had the capability on my computer to dictate and to send text messages to phones. I also wonder what other neat features are there that I totally unaware of their hidden presence. I love the simple surprises God gives me each day.
Thank you, God, for technology. I love to learn. I’m looking forward to discovering more although I want to make sure these technology advances simplify my life and don’t complicate it. That would defeat my life’s purpose — communicating and building relationships. So please give me wisdom and continue to surprise me.
Come to think of it, I have an app called FaceTime on my Mac, and I bet I can figure out how to call my granddaughters at college in time to use the camera to actually see them getting ready to go out on Friday night. So I’d better go now.
And you Mac lovers out there, what special Mac features have you discovered?