Many people don’t realize that you can use dictation to write a letter on your Mac computer. To set this up, go to System Preferences, Accessibility and click on Keyboard. Click on Dictation, and on Shortcut you can choose which keys you want to press to activate Dictation.

Pressing Control and Delete will delete the forward letter in a word.

In a few days, iOS 15 will be ready to download onto your iPhone. So, with 400 new features, I’m only gonna talk about the best ones that most people will use.

Everyone has heard about Cookies. They are basically a feature that will secretly watch what you’re doing while surfing on the Internet. What that means is that in the background, they monitor what interests you like and send that information to companies. Let’s say you’re on a site looking for coat hangers. That site will send your e-mail address to other companies, like closet hangers, clothes racks and shelving sites. All of a sudden, you’re getting e-mails from those companies trying to sell you their products.

Well. I have the best solution to stop most of that. In iOS 15 is a feature called “Block Tracking Pixels.” These pixels, if you’re unaware, are hidden within e-mails and allow marketers to discern when an e-mail was opened and how long it was open for. If you’d like to block senders from taking advantage of tracking pixels, there’s an easy solution. Go to Settings > Mail > Privacy Protection. From there, toggle on the “Protect Mail Activity” switch.

Apple Maps can now tell you arrival and departure times.

With iOS 15, you can now copy and paste text from photos. It’s called Live Text, and it can even take a photo of a handwritten note and transcribe it for you. Even cooler, iOS 15 can discern text in other languages and translate it for you. But the best yet is that iOS 15 will let users locate a lost or stolen iPhone — even if it was erased. It’s now possible to add widgets anywhere on your Home screen, delete apps and only show them on the App Library.

For iPad iOS 15, Apple also made it easier to use split-screen and slide over functions. Now, every time you open an app, you’ll see three dots on the top of the screen where you’ll be able to choose whether you want more apps running at the same time or not.

FaceTime looks more square but adds a new Portrait Mode to blur your background in a call. People can join your conversation from the web or Android with a FaceTime link.

If you’re using AirPods, choosing the Voice Isolation Mode is groundbreaking. You can wash dishes or be close to someone talking loudly, but the person on the other side of the call won’t hear anything aside from your voice.

The Weather App has a notification when rain, snow, hail or sleet is about to start or stop.

For iMessage, there is new Memoji customization with clothes, more colors, implants, oxygen tubes and soft helmets. When you send a bunch of photos on iMessage, they look more compact with a collage that you can swipe through.

Apple Maps has incredible new maps for selected cities. San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London have unprecedented detail for elevation, roads, trees, buildings, landmarks and more.

With Live Text, you can open an image or your camera, find text and make a call, send an e-mail or look up directions with just a tap on the highlighted text in a photo. In addition, Siri can finally perform many tasks without an internet connection.

Send your computer-related questions to MauiMist@aol.com.