Category: newbie2mac

Apr
4
2012

iCloud has been out for a while now, but many folks are still confused as to what it does. There’s not a lot of mystery, when you dig beneath the surface to have a look.

iCloud is Apple’s data-online service. Much like DropBox or Box.net, but with a twist – as iCloud is specifically build around Apple’s OS X and iOS systems.

First, the basics:

– The iCloud platform is free for up to 5GB of space. It then costs US$20 for up to 10GB, and there are plans for more money that go up to 100GB of storage.

– Your iTunes-purchased books, Movies, TV Shows and Music, as well as your Photo Stream don’t count against your storage space numbers, so you only pay for extra space if you go beyond 5GB of non-iTunes data.

– You can store your mail, all photos, as well as personal Music, Movies, TV Shows and documents in iCloud – these count toward your storage space use.

– iTunes Match (see below) also doesn’t count against your storage space numbers, but does have an additional cost.

There are several components to iCloud, but here’s what you’ll use most:

– iTunes Match: This component of iCloud is designed to allow you to keep your music, video and books in the iCloud platform. It costs about US$25/year above your iCloud storage costs, but currently only works for music files. Apple has stated that it will eventually also support TV Shows and Movies. You allow iTunes to scan your music collection and upload any songs not purchased from iTunes to the iCloud platform. From there, you can download those songs (plus any you bought from iTunes directly) to any Mac, PC or iDevice.

NOTE: Songs, TV Shows and Movies you bought through iTunes are available for download on any device that supports iTunes with or without an iTunes Match subscription – this service only handles non-Apple-purchased media. To find previously purchased media, go to iTunes, click on iTunes Store and look for the Purchased link.

– iCloud document storage allows you to put any data into your iCloud storage, but remember that if you go above 5GB it starts to cost money. There are similar sections for mail, calendars and contacts.

– Find my iPhone actually works for any iDevice, and will show you the location of any registered iDevice on a map. Handy if you lose your iDevice or if it gets stolen. The service only works if the iDevice is turned on, and if Push Email is enabled.

– iCloud Backup lets you backup your data and settings from your iDevice, allowing for easy restoration if you accidentally mess up your devices.

– Find my Friends allows you to track other people (with their permission, of course). Handy for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids and friends who want to know where they are in relation to each other.

– App integration allows apps to leverage iCloud for storage and syncing. Few apps take advantage of this yet, but the rumor is that more are on the way.

And that’s about it. iCloud simply enables more features in iTunes and iOS, as well as giving you some cloud-based data storage. Using more than the free 5GB is not a great idea, though, as many other services offer more space for less money, but getting features like Find My iPhone and iCloud backup are definitely worth signing up for the free version.

One last note, most of these services were also in MobileMe – Apple’s previous cloud-based service. However, Mobile Me will be no more as of this summer, so shifting over to iCloud is not only a good move, but will soon be a requirement if you want these tools.

Photo Credit: CLF

By Mike Talon •
General Info, OS X Lion •
0

Mar
28
2012

Nearly everyone will have to travel somewhere at some point in time. For work or play, we tend to travel a lot, on the whole. When you travel, you’re gonna want to take your Mac and your Apple gear with you, and that means you have to remember a few tips:

– Get a case. Nothing can ruin a trip like that $2000 plus MacBook Air getting banged up, and that one-piece case looks beautiful, but dents easily. Get yourself a carrying case and a skin or shield for it. Same goes for your iDevices. No matter what Apple says, a $3 screen shield is a good idea, and a case will often save you from a cracked device.

– Plan your baggage. Remember that iPads and MacBook Pro and Air are all electronic devices that must be taken out of your carry-on luggage and placed in a bin to go through airport security. Don’t bury them at the bottom of your bags and scramble for them in line.

– Get AppleCare+. Things get broken (even with care and cases) and get lost/stolen too. AppleCare+ and/or a 3rd-Party warranty (I use SquareTrade myself) can get your stuff back.

– Sign up for Find My i now. This service allows you to track your phone and iPad if you should lose them someplace. Quite handy when you’re not sure if you left your phone at the hotel, the client’s site, or the pizza joint you were just at.

– Get a travel power strip. You’ll be everyone’s friend with one of these things, because they turn one power outlet (which always seems to be hard to find) into three or more. Many vendors make travel-ready power strips that are compact, and typically have USB ports built in for your iDevices too. It’s hard to ask someone to unplug their stuff so you can charge, it’s easy to ask them to unplug it when you’re going to create three outlets that you both can share.

– Keep an eye on the FAA and TSA sites. The Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration are changing rules quite often. They may be allowing more electronic devices to be used during takeoff and landing, or changing what kinds of batteries you can bring into the plane. Have a quick look at their sites before your trip, so you are in the know. Of course, if you’re traveling in/through/to other countries, you want to get up to speed on any local and national rules as well.

Travel safe, and travel sane!

Photo Credit: lrargerich

By Mike Talon •
General Info •
0

Mar
20
2012

One of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had with OS X is trying to remove a Boot Camp partition in Lion when I wanted to re-partition the drive. In my case, I needed to build a larger Boot Camp partition, and had too much free space on the system partition.

With Lion, when you attempt to change the drive partitions on the system volume from inside either Lion or the Recovery Disk (which you either buy or make), you get an error about the Disk Utility complaining that it “couldn’t unmount the volume.”

That’s what you’d expect if you booted from the system drive, but getting it when booting off of a Recovery Disk or some other partition is maddening!

The issue isn’t the system partition itself, but the Recovery Partition used by Lion. This partition masquerades as part of the OS X system partition, and therefore the system partition cannot be removed.

There is a way around it though:

First, be sure you have no data that you wish to keep on any other partition. Be EXTREMELY sure of this before going forward, and take a backup just to be safe.

Now, go back and take a backup, because I know you didn’t do it before.

After all data you want is safely off the unwanted partitions, go into Disk Utility (you can do this from a regular boot, you do not need to boot into the recovery partition).

Go to the disk that contains the unwanted partitions – it will be listed by it’s hardware name (such as 250GB Toshiba XXX HDD). Click on the unwanted partitions, and then click the minus button below the partition graphic. This will remove the unwanted partition.

After you remove all unwanted partitions, click in the lower-right corner of the system partition and drag it to fill up the empty space. The Disk Utility will extend the partition without error and give you an expanded system partition.

Note that you have to remove all partitions between the one you want removed and the system partition, you cannot resize “around” other partitions on the volume. You also cannot remove the system partition itself. You can re-install OS X to remove the existing system partition and create a new one, but you cannot simply delete it.

That’s it, now you can run the Boot Camp Assistant and re-partition the drive as you see fit.

Good luck!

Photo Credit: TANAKA Juuyoh

By Mike Talon •
HowDoI?, OS X Lion •
0

Mar
14
2012

When the Mac App Store first hit, I was all for it. Things just seemed easier since anything I bought there could be installed on up to 5 Macs, and would be easier to manage and update.

Things didn’t turn out quite that way…

While the Mac App Store is great for finding, buying, and downloading software, it has major issues when it comes time to keep that software updated. Since developers can’t just post their updates to the store, those critical patches can be seriously delayed, and that’s never a good thing.

For example, I use an app called HyperDock. It’s a great app and very handy for figuring out the various windows an app has open. The problem is that there has been an updated version of HyperDock out for a few weeks now, but delays in submission and clearance in the Mac App Store mean I have yet to get the new version. I can’t just download the update from the vendor, because the Mac App Store licensing is not compatible with the retail licensing that the vendor uses everywhere else. That’s not the vendor’s fault, they literally cannot use the same licensing method for the version sold through the Mac App Store.

This is incredibly common, from what I’ve seen myself and heard about over the last half-year. Some apps get updates immediately, others wait weeks or longer to get the approval and post the update in the store. If the update is just visual or fixes minor bugs, that’s understandable, but some of these updates are major and cannot wait.

Then there’s upgrades. Most software developers have policies in place where all minor upgrades (i.e. 2.1 to 2.3, .4 and .5) are free. Major upgrades (i.e. 3.x to 4.x) are not free, but are offered to existing customers at a very discounted price. The Mac App Store doesn’t have any way to handle that, and therefore you’d have to buy the whole software package over again if the vendor doesn’t want to supply free upgrades for the next major version.

Finally, there’s free trials. With the Mac App Store, you either buy a piece of software, or it’s free. There is no middle ground, and no way for a developer to issue a time-limited key for a free demo. Some developers have created free versions of their apps with greatly limited feature sets, but that’s not the same as “try our product for 30 days with all functions available.” For apps that cost more than the $1.99 level, a free trial makes spending the cash on the full package a lot more justifiable.

There are a lot of alternatives to the Mac App Store, including MacUpdate which I talk about in this blog quite a lot. These systems work directly with developers to allow you to download free software an buy purchasable software directly from their sites, while still having a central place to go to check on fixes, updates and upgrades. It’s where I will be getting most of my software from once again, after dealing with the nightmare that is the Mac App Store.

Photo Credit: Jordiet.

By Mike Talon •
General Info •
0

Mar
7
2012

A lot of folks are giving glowing reviews to the new line of Windows Phone 7 devices on the market. Having had a chance to play with one of the Samsung Focus devices, I can see why. The big question for me was, can I sync it with my Mac?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Being used to syncing my iPhone, I was skeptical, but not only does an official and supported way to sync exist, it works quite well on both Snow Leopard and Lion.

First, head to the Mac App Store (Apple Menu, App Store) and search for the Windows Phone 7 Connector app. That will get you set up with all the software you need. Run that app, and connect your phone to your Mac via the provided cable that came with your phone.

After the software recognizes your device, it will offer to sync data and media for you. Microsoft went out of their way to make the process simple and reliable. You can sync local files from your Mac to the phone, as well as syncing iTunes music and playlists.

There are a couple of things to note:

1 – I never got the over-the-air sync to work properly, but that might have just been a problem in my configuration.

2 – Only non-DRM media will play on the Windows Phone device. You’d expect that, and since most iTunes music files are non-DRM these days, it isn’t a problem for music. It *is* a problem for movies and TV shows, however.

3 – The sync did not seem to update play counts and other meta-information for media. Again, not unexpected, and usually not critical, but it hurts things like Last.FM scribbling.

Aside from those hiccups, the Connector app worked incredibly well, and allows you to play nice between Apple and Microsoft hardware.

Photo Credit: okalkavan

By Mike Talon •
HowDoI?, OS X Lion •
0

Feb
28
2012

Since Snow Leopard, OS X machines have been able to encrypt sensitive data on your machine. It has evolved in Lion, and you might indeed want to turn it on, but deciding when and where to do so is something you’ll want to get some background information on.

In the System Preferences page of your Mac, you’ll find the Security Privacy page, which has a tab for FileVault. In Snow Leopard, this would encrypt your User’s Home Directory (./Users/UserName) and nothing else. Good, but that still left a lot of potentially sensitive data unencrypted.

In Lion, FileVault was extended to be able to encrypt the entire system drive. This let you lock up your whole OS X system, including OS binaries and all data that was on the system drive itself. While this still didn’t cover any external drives, it was a huge step forward in data protection.

FileVault in Lion doesn’t seem to slow down processes on Core i type systems, which means that if you bought your Mac after 2009, you probably won’t notice any difference with File Vault enabled. There are some slowdowns on extremely disk-intensive applications (like video editing) but otherwise it should be invisible to you.

The one exception is boot times. Booting up from a powered-down Mac can take a while longer on iMacs and other non-SSD machines when FileVault is on. Personally, it added about 2/3 of a minute to my boot-up times on a 2010 iMac. On an SSD Macbook Air, I noticed no difference in boot times with FileVault enabled, so it appears to be just read/write speed that makes that operation take longer on the iMac and MB Pro.

Now, since only boot times and very intensive applications seem to have any slow-downs, why wouldn’t you use Filevault? Well, there are a couple of reasons:

– You boot into Windows via BootCamp and work a lot with files on your Mac’s system drive. Since the drive is only available while OS X is running, you can’t get into it via BootCamp.

– You use an offline backup tool. This is pretty rare, since most common personal backup software works while you’re logged into your account, but if you back up your Mac while you’re not logged in, there will be issues since the disk is locked out when you’re not logged in.

Otherwise, FileVault is a good idea. Portable devices an be stolen, and using FileVault will help to insure that at least your data doesn’t become public knowledge for thieves. Yes, they’ll still have your Mac – which sucks – but they won’t have access to your bank account information.

Even for non-portable devices, it’s not a bad idea to turn FileVault Full Disk Encryption on. Burglaries do happen, and computers are a hot commodity for thieves. An encrypted system is still lost, but at least your data will not be sitting there waiting to be stolen too.

For external devices, you can encrypt data, but not with FileVault. TrueCrypt is an open-source, free encryption tool that can create a protected directory or even encrypt any non-system drive entirely. Great for use on those removable USB hard drives that might contain private information. There are many tools that can do this, but TrueCrypt is great security at a great price, and actually worth much more than you pay for it (not often true of free software).

So unless you’re editing videos or doing Photoshop work for most of your day, Full Disk Encryption is a good idea. It’s part of the OS, and easy to configure. Not a bad way to take that extra measure of protection without completely changing the way you use your Mac.

Photo Credit: Zitona

By Mike Talon •
OS X Lion •
0

Feb
23
2012

With Apple’s release of beta code for the upcoming OS X Mountain Lion release, one thing had many folks talking.

The Notification Center, a very popular component of iOS 5, will be coming to Mac desktops and laptops when Mountain Lion is released. This led many (myself included) to think about how Growl would be able to continue when the OS began to incorporate that functionality natively.

Growl – for those who haven’t seen it – is a notification app that runs on nearly every Mac. If you use applications that pop up notification windows to alert you of events, you’ve probably seen Growl in action. A few months ago, Growl went from a free application to a paid app, and suddenly a great number of people who never even knew it was on their machines became very aware of it. Having to pay for the new version will do that to folks.

For the most part, the switch to a paid app was accepted well by the general public. While it’s worth every penny of the US$1.99 they charge for it, that is because there isn’t another app that works as well, as seamlessly, and as integrated to the OS itself. Now, with Mountain Lion getting Notification Center, the folks behind Growl have a real fight on their hands.

To kick off the battle, Growl has posted a blog article showing all the ways that we’ll still need – or at least really want – Growl on the OS X platform.

The argument is pretty straightforward. The Notification Center platform will only cover apps bought from the Mac App Store, and will not have all the functionality of Growl itself.

That’s great, but there’s an issue that may still cause problems for Growl. More and more new Mac Users only know about the App Store for getting new software for their Mac. They rarely use non-App-Store-purchased packages, and therefore don’t need a 3rd-Party alert tool.

I think that Growl will continue to be a great application. For Mac users who get software from multiple sources, it’s still a vital app to have; and even if you only use the Mac App Store to buy software, there will be many apps that continue to stand by Growl.

With luck, Growl will indeed integrate into Notification Center, but continue to supply alerting and tracking to all apps on Macs.

Photo Credit: Ernst Vikne

By Mike Talon •
Mountain Lion •
0

Feb
22
2012

This AM I downloaded the audio for the Republican Primary 2012 Debate from the 19th. Before anyone asks, I feel strongly about listening to ALL candidates before making any voting decisions.

The issue is that nearly every version of the audio and video I found has horribly low sound levels. On a PC, you’d use a 3rd-Party product to re-code the MP3 to a higher audio rate, lose a little bit of quality, but get a file you could hear clear sound on.

On a Mac, it’s actually easier!

Credit where it’s due, I found the basic instructions here on POI-Factory, but there were some hiccups along the way with iTunes 10.5.1 (the current version for Lion).

First, download the audio. You can get it from wherever you want, I found it on Ron Paul’s podcast. His Podcast team has been posting the audio from every debate within 24 hours, so very convenient; and I didn’t have to do anything quasi-legal like recording the YouTube version.

Next, load the audio that’s too low into iTunes. The easiest way is to just drag and drop the file from wherever you downloaded it right into a playlist. If the audio in question is a podcast, then you can just find the podcast episode in iTunes.

Right-click (CTRL-Click) the track in iTunes and go to “Get Info”

Go to the Options tab

Slide the Volume slider to the right to increase the volume level for just this track and hit OK.

This may take a little trial and error to find the right level for you, but iTunes will remember the level each time you hit OK.

By the way, the same trick works to LOWER the levels, should you ever download an audio file that has the levels set way too high.

By sitestuffadmin •
HowDoI?, OS X Lion •
0

Feb
22
2012

I often check Replyz to give back to the Social Media community and answer questions folks have on a few topics that I have some knowledge of.

One of the frequent questions on using Mac OS is “how do I set the default application for a file type?” It’s actually pretty easy to accomplish this, all you need is a file of the type you want to assign an application to, and a mouse/trackpad.

irst, right-click (or secondary-tap) the file and choose “Get Info.” This will bring up the dialog box shown to the right. You may have to click the little arrows at the top-left of each section to expand that section out.

About half-way down the Info page, you can see an “Open With” section. This contains two objects, a drop-down list for choosing the app, and a “Change All…” button.

To select which application will open this file ONCE, just drop down the menu you see and choose one of the listed applications. This list contains all the installed apps that have registered as able to open that type of file. If the app you want is not on the list, choose either “App Store” or “Other” from the menu (they show up at the bottom of the drop-down list).

If you choose App Store, the Mac App Store opens for you to find and install a software package for this file type. If you choose Other, Finder opens to your Applications directory so you can choose an app you already have installed. Note that you may need to change the drop-down menu under the file view from “Recommended Applications” to “All Applications” in order to see all the apps you have installed.

The “Always open with” checkbox on this page applies ONLY to this one file, so leave it unchecked when you choose the app you want to use for ALL files of this type.

Once you select a file type, you can then click the “Change All…” button under the drop-down menu on the Info window, which will allow you to specify that ALL files of this type should use the selected application to open/view, from now on.

That’s it, from then on, any time you open a file of that type, it will open with the selected application!

Note that there are two instances where the default app will change. 1) you can manually change it again using the same method you just went through. 2) a newly installed application can take the file type over. Usually you get the ability to stop a new app from doing that during installation, but sometimes it happens automatically. If that happens, you will have to manually set the file type to open with your preferred program once more.

By sitestuffadmin •
HowDoI?, OS X Lion •
0

Feb
22
2012

Not all that long ago, I laid out directions for doing a Permissions Repair of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. With Lion, Apple introduced Full Disk Encryption (FDE), which makes the process slightly more complicated.

Of course, you can still open Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder in Applications), and choose to Repair Disk Permissions that way. It works well, and isn’t a bad way to do routine maintenance once a week or so, but it doesn’t fix every one of the various permissions errors that crop up through normal use.

That’s because running Repair Disk Permissions from *inside* the booted OS will mean that some permissions cannot be altered (the files are in use, locked, etc.). Again, normally, this isn’t an issue, as those permissions won’t cause slowdowns or hiccups under normal circumstances.

But what happens if you notice that your Mac is acting slower than usual, apps are malfunctioning, etc.? First, check the usual suspects. Does the app need to be reinstalled? Will a reboot (first unchecking the window persistence checkbox) fix the problem? If not, then you should do a full permission repair.

First, print out this post, because you’re going to have to boot into Recovery Mode, and that means you won’t be able to get online to read the rest of the instructions.

Next, reboot your Mac, holding down the CMD and R keys from the moment the system starts (you hear the start-up BONG sound) until you see the status spinner on the white-background startup screen. Once you see the spinner, let go of the CMD and R keys.

This will boot you into Recovery Mode. If you have FDE enabled, it will also ask you to unlock the volume with your usual password. You’ll then see the spinner again, and within a few moments the Recovery Options wizard will pop up. Choose Disk Utilities and click Continue.

Once Disk Utilities is open, and if you’re using FDE, go to File in the Menu Bar and select Unlock Disk diskname – where diskname is the name of the hard drive that contains your Mac OS system. You will need to provide your normal Administrator password to unlock the volume.

In the Disk Utilities window, click on the disk/partition where Mac OS is installed (not the physical volume name, just the partition name) and then click Repair File Permissions in the lower portion of the right-hand window. After that, all you need to do is wait.

You will nearly always see several permissions being fixed, this is perfectly normal and does not indicate that anything bad or malicious has been going on. Normal OS operations occasionally cause permissions to get set incorrectly, and this process fixes those errors.

Once the process is done, you can simply restart your machine from the Apple Menu and boot up normally.

You’ll find that a permissions repair can help to correct a lot of strange issues that you might be seeing on your Mac, so doing this once a month or so is not a bad idea at all.

One important note, I have found that using a 3rd-Party keyboard is not a good idea for this process. My keyboard (a Microsoft Natural Keyboard) doesn’t seem to be recognized by Mac OS when a boot is happening, so I can’t hold down CMD and R. Any of the Apple keyboards (bluetooth and wired alike) seem to work just fine, so I keep one handy just in case.

By sitestuffadmin •
Uncategorized •
0