The new iPhone 15 has a USB C port for charging and transferring data. Its 20 times faster than the old USB 2 port that the old iPhones use. The USB C transfers 10 gigabytes a second — now that’s fast!

Now we’ll talk about AirDrop and NameDrop. AirDrop has been around for quite a while. When you’re near another iPhone, you can tap on a photo of your choice, then click on the share icon. After you choose the recipients, it will instantly transfer that photo to them.

With NameDrop, you need to tap the top part of both iPhones together. Just lightly touch them together. A menu pops up, allowing you to share contact information. You can also share files, which could be data files (like documents), music or photo files to the other iPhone. When the prompt appears, you can tap Receive Only to get the new contact details.

There’s also something new called SharePlay that is used with Apple apps such as Apple Music and Apple TV. All you need to do is open up the contact of the person you want to share a song, video or multiplayer game, touch the tops of both iPhones together, then tap SharePlay and the Confirmation prompt.

These are all new features, so you just have to try them out and choose which ones you want to use.

When I’m in my word processor in Pages, or reading an article on a website with important information that I want to copy and paste elsewhere, I can tap the Command and A keys, then choose Select All. It highlights all of the words. But if you just want to select a paragraph or a few words to copy, hold down the left mouse button and drag your mouse over the words to select them. Again, they are highlighted. Now I can right-click my mouse and choose to copy the highlighted section, or I can press Command+C and it will copy the selected area. When you want to paste the highlighted content into another open document, just click your mouse in the space where you want it to appear and press Command+V. You can also right-click your mouse and choose Paste.

Here is a neat trick to scroll through photos. Open your photos on your Mac and click Command+A — it automatically selects all your photos. Now click on one; it blows it up to full size. By tapping your right arrow key, you can scroll through the rest of your photos in full screen.

Command+Space brings up Spotlight, where you can type in a word and a dictionary pops up.

All the iPhones have that weird notch at the top of the screen. Well, in iPhone 14 and iPhone 15, it’s called the Dynamic Island. How it works is that it will display messages and icons in that tiny black box when certain apps are working.

For instance, if you set up a timer, it will display in numbers the countdown. A better example is to start playing music and then return to the home screen. In the Dynamic Island, it shows sound waves on the right side. If you press on the island, your controls pop up, where you can stop or pause it.

Basically, it just shows the app functions that you’re using in that tiny black area while you’re in the home screen. Big deal… I wish they would just get rid of it!