Completely backup iPhone
This is a nice thing to do before running an iPhone software update.
1) Click on the iTunes menu, and go to Preferences…
2) Click on Devices.
3) In the list of Device Backups, with the dates, click on each of your backups, then below, click the button called Delete Backup.
4) In the left-hand column in iTunes, right-click on your iPhone, and click Backup.
The new iPhone: to buy or or not to buy
Everybody has now caught wind of the excellent new iPhone software and hardware coming this month. All current iPhone owners will be able to download the new OS 3.0 for free on June 17.
The question I’m getting asked now is whether one should buy the new phone, or will one be happy simply updating their existing hardware with the new system?
I won’t delve into all the new features, some of which will be available to all iPhones, and some which will only come with the new iPhone 3GS. (Sidenote: I’m not going to type it “3G S”, ‘cos I think it looks stupid.) The Unofficial Apple Weblog has done a fine writeup of most of the new features, and of course you can see Apple’s pages on the iPhone 3GS and on the iPhone OS 3.0 for full lists.
Out of everything announced for the iPhone, cut, copy, and paste is far and away the most important new feature, one that most of us feel we should have had from the get-go. I’ve finally gotten to play with it myself, and it works beautifully, and solidifies the iPhone’s position as the must-have gadget of the moment. And it will be available on every iPhone in existence, and that makes us happy.
The features that are coming only to the new iPhone 3GS, the big ones at least, are faster phone operations, voice control, a digital compass (enabling turn-by-turn directions, among other things), a much improved camera, and shooting/editing/sharing video. (I just read they’ve added an “fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating” to the screen. So maybe we don’t want to put film on this time, although I really like my anti-glare screen.)
Honestly, they had me at “speed.” I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with the time it takes to go from one app on the iPhone to another. Apple has optimized things a little in OS 3.0 — contacts searching is noticeably quicker — but my iPhone 3G still feels sluggish. So, with a better processor and more RAM, the new iPhone holds much promise for the more impatient among us.
So, could I be happy with my current iPhone? Yes. 3.0 makes it a much, much better device.
Am I going to buy a new iPhone? Yes. In fact, YES! I am looking forward to turn-by-turn directions and voice control… although I really want to be able to say “new email to bob smith,” and start transcription, and it doesn’t look like we’re there yet.
Am I going to buy the iPhone 3GS when it comes out? Not… just… yet.
Here’s the deal: The $199 & $299 prices announced for the 16GB and 32GB models, respectively, are the “subsidized” prices, i.e. the price that you pay if (a) you enter into a new 2-year contract with AT&T, or (b) if you are already under contract, and you bought your last subsidized phone more than a year ago.
The iPhone 3G hit the shelves July 11, 2008. Today is June 13, 2009 (6 days before the iPhone 3GS release). I have confirmed with AT&T that anyone who bought an iPhone 3G at the subsidized price won’t qualify for the lower price on a 3GS for at least a month, July 13 at the earliest.
Some folks have been misled by going to Apple’s “Buy an iPhone” page, because it doesn’t give you the above information, and does give you the impression that you’re gonna pay the full $400 or $500 price for a 3GS. Unfortunately, some news outlets fanned the flames of false information.
The nice part about that wait is that I’m forced to be patient and let everybody else experience the good and the bad of the new phone. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but last year’s iPhone Day 1 was quite a mess, with the new MobileMe service and everybody activating at once, and the very buggy 2.0 software.
A final note: I just sold my 1st-generation iPhone 2G for $220 on craigslist, and there are, right now, listings for 3G phones as high as $400. Tip: An older phone is more valuable if you unlock and jailbreak it. (Call us at 210.787.2709 for assistance.) So one can potentially turn a profit in getting a new phone.
Junk Mail mode in Apple Mail
I lost my junk mail icon – how do I get it back to teach my inbox what is junk?
Mail menu > Preferences > Junk Mail
Set it to automatically Move it to the Junk mailbox, as opposed to what used to be called Training mode, which is now, in Leopard the Mark it as junk mail, but leave it in my Inbox setting.
But before you do, I would suggest leaving it in Training mode for a bit, and clicking the Junk/Not Junk button. In fact, one will initially need to train Apple Mail to recognize legit mail — newsletters and such — by clicking Not Junk.
I’ve always said a month, but that’s an arbitrary guess on my part, and is contingent on someone being vigilant about clicking the Junk/Not Junk button. Stay in Training mode until you are confident that it’s catching junk mail correctly by marking junk mail brown, and leaving non-junk along.
Make sure that you add any trusted correspondents to your address book (Message menu > Add Sender to Address Book (⌘⇧Y)) to prevent them from being mis-identified as spam.
Gmail, if you use it, and you should be using it, will catch most of the spam most of the time, but that’s how you deal with the rest.
Backup Address Book & iCal, and troubleshoot syncing
Just a quick note of instructions for Leopard.
1) Backup Address Book
File > Export > Address Book Archive …
Agree to the default file name, saving it with a date
2) Backup iCal
File > Backup iCal
Agree to the default file name, saving it with a date
3) Quit all applications on the iMac.
Then open iSync in Applications.
iSync menu > Reset Sync Data
Reboot
4) Let syncing happen. If it comes up with conflicts, review them, and choose the item in each conflict most likely to be accurate.
Should I apply the 10.5.7 combo update?
Just a brief note to all who are wondering if they should let Software Update install the latest Leopard update:
In general regard to software updates, I always find it easier to tell people, unless they are in a production environment where app failure might cost $$, to go ahead and download and install whatever updates come down the pike…
BUT! I keep one exception to that policy, and those are the big OS updates, i.e. going from 10.5 to 10.5.1 or 10.5.6 to 10.5.7.
When I am going to install a major update like that, I always go to Apple.com and download the “combo update” for that version. So today, for example, I did a Google search for “10.5.7 combo,” came up with this link. I went there, clicked “Download,” and let the big honkin’ 729MB file start its transfer.
Combo updates reinstall all of the updated files from, in this case, 10.5.1 through 10.5.7. This gives you a nice refresh of your OS — like an exfoliation — and can prevent a lot of the issues that some people report with updates.
(You will run a complete backup of your hard drive before you install any updates, now, won’t you?)
If you do want to know what problems people are having with a software update, and whether they might affect you, check out MacFixIt.com. One can scan them on the off chance that one of them might have an impact on one’s computing life.
Buying a Used Mac
Why do I recommend that most people buy their Mac brand-spanking new? My reasons range from maximizing your investment, to not wasting time in the purchase process, to squeezing the most efficient production power out of your computer, to plain ol’ street cred.
Until recently, every time I looked at the options for used Macs — mostly on eBay — going the pre-owned route made little sense to me. Macs have long enjoyed a high resale value, but each new revision to the hardware used faster processors, accepted more memory and bigger hard drives. and better accommodated the latest OS X. So a buyer might save a couple of hundred dollars, but I would feel that their investment just wouldn’t last long enough to justify the initial savings.
Apple’s move to the Intel processors has changed the scenario. Macs that sport Intel Core 2 Duo are just marvelous. Also, from mid-2007 until just recently, the most popular, bread-and-butter models — iMacs, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros — have supported a maximum of 4 GB (“gigabytes”) of PC5300 RAM (“random-access memory”). Other specs such as bus speed and hard-drive sizes have improved, but in my experience, processor and memory are the most important factors in how a computer is going to perform the common day-to-day tasks of opening a document, loading a web page, or opening the average application.
Meanwhile, Mac minis didn’t change between mid-2007 and just this month. And while Mac Pros have seen some impressive gains in benchmarking, even the early versions of those machines would cut with a blazing saber through any tasks the average, non-professional Mac user could ever dream of throwing at them. The MacBook Air has remained quite static since its release.
So, yes, I’m suggesting that for many folks, a Mac from late 2007 will serve just as well as one from off the shelf at the Apple store. But eBay is definitely may not be the place to buy one, and craigslist.org definitely is. If you have a bit of patience, and some time, you can find a great machine at sanantonio.craigslist.org. A MacBook, for example, might run you as little as $600.
Here are my requirements. If the machine you find on craigslist (or wherever) does not meet these, please do not spend your good money on it:
- It has to sport an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better, such as an i5 or i7. I don’t care what speed, but it can’t just be Intel Core Duo (note the lack of the “2″).
- It has to be upgradeable to at least 4 GB RAM (memory)
- It has to be either coverable by, or already covered by, the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP), which extends Apple’s hardware and software warranty to 3 years from purchase date. AppleCare can be applied to a Mac up to a year from original purchase date, so if the Mac you find is still young enough, and the original buyer didn’t get APP, be ready to buy it from Apple or Amazon or somewhere.
Note that if the Mac does not already have that 4 GB or AppleCare, you can use that as a bargaining chit. But if I may iterate: if it doesn’t have AppleCare and is older than a year, DON’T BUY THE MAC. Right before a Mac’s AppleCare coverage is going to run out, I strongly encourage you to take it to the Apple Store Genius Bar and asking them to give its hardware a once-over. If there’s anything wrong, they’ll fix it.
Swap slideshows
A friend on my bowling team made a PowerPoint presentation on his PC at work that he wants to show us all. If he emails it to me, will I be able to see it?
Totally! (1) I’m pretty certain you have Microsoft Office for Mac, which means you have PowerPoint, which will open the heck out of that doc.
(2) Now, check this out: Have your friend email you the file. From right in your email, click once on the attachment’s icon, then click the “Quick Look” button — or just hit the space bar. Isn’t that cool? Now, you may not see transitions, and maybe not embedded video, but almost all of the content should be visible.
(Sidenote: Just today, a friend of mine was trying to see previews of some design files, .eps and the like, that Quick Look wouldn’t render. She found a $15 Quick Look plug-in called SneakPeek Pro that fixed that, which made me look up a whole list of Quick Look plug-ins, many of them free. These can really extend your Mac to showing you fast previews of all kinds of stuff. But I digress…)
(3) But wait, there’s more! If you want to make presentations look just a whole lot better than you can in PowerPoint, you should look at the new iWork — it’s just so good. Apple’s Keynote software makes really fine presentations really efficiently. While you’re at it, have you picked up the new iLife, with iPhoto Face Recognition?
(4) I just recently found out about SlideShare, a service on which to store and show your presentations. As far as I can tell, it’s free.
Save a presentation as a PowerPoint Movie [link]
- On the File menu, click Make Movie.
- To adjust PowerPoint Movie options, click Adjust Settings on the dialog box that drops down, and then click Next.
- Choose the options you want, and then click OK.
- In the Save As box, type a name for your movie. If your movie will be viewed by users of Windows-based computers, select Append File Extension.
- Click Save.
Once you do, you can put it on an iPod or iPhone, and watch it on that smaller screen, or…
If he wanted to show it on our big-screen TV, how do we do that?
Ahhhhhh, now that’s an interesting one. The most direct way is to run a monitor cable from your computer to your TV. (Your iMac may not feel as convenient as a laptop to accomplish that, but it wouldn’t be that unwieldy.) Any Mac or Windows computer will know that it has a new display, and will show whatever you put up.
A couple of other options would be:
Connecting your iPod or iPhone to a video dock, such as this or this. Here is some help from Apple on getting video off of your iPod or iPhone.
I have one client who converts his presentations into image files that he can display as a slideshow on his Apple TV, which is an appliance that fits in with your other home stereo components, and let’s you easily play music, movies, and photos that you acquire through iTunes or by other means.
Email not receiving
My Inbox in Apple Mail has a triangle icon with an exclamation point in it, and isn’t receiving emails. I’m having to use my “All Mail” folder below. How do I fix this?
I get this question from time to time. It happens for different reasons, often when either your internet or your email service is interrupted — which has afflicted Gmail recently. Usually the easy fix is, in Apple Mail, clicking on Mailbox > Take All Accounts Online. I’m actually a little surprised that “All Mail” worked; kudos on finding that!
The triangle went away all on its own!!
It does that. Now, what would be great is if they made a big freakin’ sign that said, “If you see a freakin’ triangle over here, this is what you should do…”
Sheesh.
Create a wireless network without a wireless router
We have several Mac minis, all connected to our network with Ethernet. We just got a laptop, but we don’t have a wireless router. Can one of the minis create a wireless network?
Yes, that’s super-easy. In Tiger: On one of the minis, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Internet. In Leopard: System Preferences > Sharing, and turn on “Internet Sharing” in the list of services. In there you can share the Ethernet connection via Airport, which tells the mini to create what’s called an “ad-hoc” wireless network. You can name it what you want and password-protect it, too.
What email service should I use?
I have an earthlink.net email address, which comes with webmail and 10MB storage. But I’m thinking about changing my internet service provider? And sometimes I run out of storage at earthlink. I just don’t know if it’s worth it to me to convert to a new email address.
May I suggest Google Apps to host your email? It’s free, has a frigton of storage (7.5GB), and has all the bounteous benefit of the Gmail interface, or you can access it from Apple Mail or your email client of choice. There are few comparable alternatives out right now, and none of those are free.
This is important: You can KEEP your current email addresses. In the case of your earthlink.net address, we just start forwarding it to Gmail — either a general @gmail.com address or to your @yourdomain.com. Your correspondents may never have to know that you changed addresses. And for you@ (or whatevertheheckyouwant@) yourdomain.com, Google simply becomes your email host.
You can pay Earthlink a few bucks month to keep the address, but that’s a sucky long-term idea.
Also, the Gmail interface is importantly fantastic. I sometimes switch over to it just to get certain things like automatic organization accomplished. And lemme tell ya, the spam filtering is outta sight. I don’t see spam anymore. One message a month or less, and I can always look in the spam folder in Apple Mail just to double-check I haven’t missed a real message.
One last thing: There was once the perception that a @yahoo.com (or the like) implies an inconstant personality. I can say definitively that, especially since Gmail, that is no longer the case. The service is recognized net-wide as legitimate and unique. I practically insist on my clients using Gmail, unless they are already on Yahoo. If they have any address other than Yahoo, including using their own domain, 7 out of 10 times we get them over to Gmail quick as we can, and they never look back.
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