Many people use Siri with their iPhones or iPads, but did you know that the MacBook also has Siri capabilities? You have to click on an icon in the upper righthand corner to activate it.

Well, now you can create a shortcut key to launch Siri, and all the new computers have a setting that will launch Siri by just talking to it instead hitting a key to activate it.

To set this up, you need to open up System Preferences on your Mac and click on Siri. A menu pops up, so let’s first click on “Keyboard Shortcut.” There you can choose the options that Siri displays or choose Customize and create your own key on the keyboard by pressing on one of the many keys. I chose the right arrow key.

After you did that, let’s have some fun and open up the Pages app. Ready? Say, “launch Pages” or “open Pages” if your new laptop uses the voice control. If you have an older laptop, then press the customize key that you created and say, “launch Pages.” You can also open up a document that you were working on by saying, “Open up the divorce document!”

Siri can also place events in the Calendar App without you opening up the app. Say, “Set up a meeting with my attorney at 4 p.m.,” which will then automatically open up the Calendar App and insert the event for you without typing it in. Or say, “Remind me to take out the trash at 4 p.m.,” and the Reminder App now has that event typed in it by Siri.

In the Message App, you can use Siri to add a message like, “Send a message to John that I’m not coming in to work today.” You can also use the E-mail App with Siri to send out an e-mail. For example, say, “Send an e-mail message to John ABOUT work tomorrow.” Siri will respond with, “What would you like to say to John?”

Now say something like, “I quit!” Notice I capitalized the word “ABOUT,” so it was much faster to write out the message . So use ABOUT in your e-mail message to someone.

Get this — you can ask Siri to do conversions like “how many ounces in a pound?” or “how do you spell terminate?” Siri also displays the definition of the word on your screen.

Okay, all you kids going back to school or college, here are some tips using your Mac that you need to know. First everyone needs to create an iCloud backup in case your Mac gets stolen or broken and you lose all your class notes or data.

So let’s start by opening up System Preferences; on the upper right is the icon Apple ID. Click on it, then check box the iCloud Drive then Options. Now check the box “Desktop & Documents Folders.” With all that done, you now have a backup of all your data in the cloud.

A Hawaiian keyboard extension for Chrome OS is now available.

Here is something that Apple doesn’t tell you. If a green dot appears on the top right above your Wi-Fi symbol, that means an app is using your camera. If you swipe down from the corner of your iPhone, which opens up the Control Center, it will show you the app using it. If you see an orange dot above the Wi-Fi symbol, that means someone is watching you. Send your computer-related questions to MauiMist@aol.com.