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Apple & iPhone Updates

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Keeping up with the latest?  Jim Hamm forwards to us these links about features for iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. Here's the Apple sneak preview.  MobileCrunch says there have been 50 million iPhones sold so far, and their article discusses multi-tasking, iAd, a huge Mail update, and a "bunch of other stuff."  The third link takes you to a one hour video of a presentation of OS 4 done mostly by Steve Jobs.

Jim summarizes the video, "It is impressive, and really gives you a better understanding of what this new OS does. After you see this, stop and think a minute. All this comes from a phone. Remember, something we use to just make phone calls on.  Love it or hate it, the iPhone is really one amazing device."

For today's article (dated 4-12-10) that covers the latest from Apple on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch,  iAds, and more see Barron's "Apple Throws a Potent iPunch."

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Sneaky Cookies You Might Not Have Seen

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Flash “cookies” can be up to 100 kb. They never expire, will never be deleted automatically, and by default they don’t have to ask your permission to save all this data. There’s no easy way to delete them yourself, your browsers are not aware that they exist, so clearing Cookies and History doesn’t help. Adobe has hidden the settings in a Flash app deep in their website. Got your attention, so far?

Also, did you know you can set privacy settings for access to your camera and/or microphone on your computer? The Maintain Blog alerted me to check out Adobe’s Website Storage Panel. The page that comes up has the information from your computer already listed. You can view and make changes in Storage, Security Settings, Global Notifications Settings, and more. Reassuringly, it says, “Adobe has no access to this list or to any information that the websites may have stored on your computer.  (Double click on this illustration to enlarge.)

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iPademonium

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With a newly-coined word like "iPademonium" these guys are talking about "you-know-what."  Jim Hamm suggests we look at the Small Dog Electronics offerings.  He's purchased items from them and thinks highly of them as an Apple retailer.  They offer a newsletter you can subscribe to,  (#665 is about iPad) and their home page is here with Apple products, refurbished Apple products, and accessories for the iPad.

Notable Computer History

Going back to the very beginnings of the computer, this article starts with "The 'father of the personal computer' who kick-started the careers of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen has died at the age of 68.  Dr Henry Edward Roberts was the inventor of the Altair 8800, a machine that sparked the home computer era." It continues on with some fascinating facts.  Thanks to David Passell for sending this link.

iPad, First-Hand

Today was iPad Day, and here's a first-hand report from De Prez Allen Laudenslager: "I stopped at Best Buy to see about getting them to present at the July PMUG meeting, and while I was there I played with an iPad for about 10 minutes.

"The cool factor is through the roof. I started by touching the Safari icon which took me to the Apple iPad home page. By touching the bookmark tab, it brought up the preloaded bookmarks. When I touched the URL bar, a keyboard rolled up from off-screen at the bottom of the touch screen. I found that you really can't touch type standing up because the slightest touch on the screen puts that character where you are typing. I might get used to it sitting down, but I doubt it since touch typists always rest their fingers on the 'home' keys.

"I found that using my left and right index finger and hunt and peck worked well, and after entering your URL at least once, when you start to type it pulls up a list that matches what you have typed to that point. If you see the address you want on the list, just touch it and touch the 'go' key on the keyboard and zip -- you're there.

"I opened Pages and tried a new document. How do you get the keyboard to show up? Since the sales people were busy with real customers, I tried double touch and wowser!!! there is the keyboard. As a touch typist hunt and peck feels odd, but since this is not really meant to replace a full-up computer it would work just fine for me to make notes while reading the daily news.

"A neat gadget, and I recommend taking the time to drop by either Best Buy or the Apple Store to check one out. When I finally do break down and get an e-book reader it will for sure be the iPad since it does so much more than just let me read books."

Apple iPad FAQs

The David Pogue column in the New York Times caught Jim Hamm's eye, and it's a quick scan about the frequently asked questions on the iPad.  Here's the link. He gets right to the point, and ends up with, "But I'm telling you, the multitouch screen/software makes it very, very different from a laptop, and the screen size makes it very, very different from an iPhone.  It's something entirely new.  So yes, if it appeals to you, you'd have to buy it in addition to your laptop or iPhone."

Ginger Carlson finds more:  "Check out this link about the iPad."

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Safety in Backups

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Here's a lengthy report from John Carter, but it's worth your time to read it.  From here on we're quoting John. 

Scenario: You've had your Mac now for 2+ years and everything seems to be running just fine. Suddenly, without warning, you can no longer boot up the system. What happened?

The hard drive just failed!!! Well, maybe something else, but let's say it was the hard drive.

What's the best recovery method? Well, to get you started right away it would be nice if you could simply continue to use your computer until you have the time and the money to get it fixed. That can be done if you have an external drive ready to plug in and boot from.

To prepare an external drive as an alternate boot source, you need an external hard drive of the same size as your internal hard drive (use Get Info on Macintosh HD and read the Capacity). The external hard drive can have any configuration of inputs; USB 2.0 is the most common, but Firewire 400 is better, and Firewire 800 is best. When USB 3.0 is available for the Mac, that is even better. However, the price increases with each better interface, so it is quite all right to use USB 2.0 for this emergency external hard drive. Don't worry if the external drive doesn't say it is for a Mac, because it will be reformatted when you create the boot drive next.

The next thing you need is SuperDuper! for Mac. Download it from here. You can use SuperDuper! for free as long as you don't attempt to use any of the advanced features, and you won't need them for creating an emergency boot drive.

When the USB external drive is connected, launch SuperDuper!.

 (Double click to enlarge the illustration.) 
Notice in the image above that the Copy field points to the Macintosh HD (your internal drive) and in the To field you click on the double arrow and select the external drive you plugged in.

Next comes the easy part. Click on "Copy Now," take the defaults for any prompts that follow, and go to bed. In the morning, you may discover an error message on your screen that says, "You have been logged out..." blah, blah, blah. Just ignore that message. What you need to know at this point is that you should now be running off of the external drive and NOT off of the internal drive. This is simply a confirmation that creating the external boot drive actually worked!

To get back to working off of the internal drive, open System Preferences and click on "Startup Disk." The external drive you are running on should be highlighted. If it isn't, something went wrong with the copy process. (I shouldn't scare you like that. But if this did happen, you should still be running off of the internal drive and you should then call for help to figure out what to do next.) To boot up off the Internal drive, click on the icon identifying "Mac OS X < ... > on Macintosh HD," then click on the Restart button. When the Mac starts up again, eject the external hard drive and put it away for emergencies.

You're not done. If you ever do need to use the external boot drive, remember that the only applications, updates, and files in it are the ones at the time you created the boot drive. Maybe once in a while you might want to do this all over again? Not really. If you were also smart enough to maintain a Time Machine backup, you only need to update the boot drive from the latest Time Machine backup entry. Now you're back in business right where you left off, and maybe with just a few lost minutes (the Time Machine performs a backup every half hour). When time and money permit, take your Mac to your repair center and have them install a new drive. Be sure to also give them the boot drive you created so they can restore it to the new internal drive.

Remember, failure to protect your work with adequate backups is a down payment on future upsets.

When you are ready to purchase a suitable boot drive, do a Google/Yahoo search on the Internet for "external hard drivegb" (fill in the size - without the < and >) and consider one of the compact (thin) drives from Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital, or LaCie - because small is cute.

A NOTE ABOUT TIME MACHINE.

A recommended external drive to use with Time Machine depends on how much of your internal drive is being used and how much you expect to fill it in the next year or two (before it crashes). The size should be at least three times larger than what you expect to be using in your internal drive. Let me explain why. The larger it is, the farther back in time you can go to retrieve a lost file. For example, a 1.5TB drive used to backup a 500GB internal drive that contains 300GB of data will store backups for about the last three or four months. If your internal drive is 500GB and you're using less than 100GB, then a 500GB external drive might be adequate for short-term recovery. However, it is highly recommended that the drive has a Firewire 800 input so that performing a backup is performed in the quickest time possible. That being said, a USB 2.0 drive will work if saving an extra $50 means more. At least do a search for "external hard drive firewire 800" and look for bargains.

There's a bright side to every catastrophe. If your hard drive does fail, it could be a good excuse to buy the newest computer. You really don't need to hang onto years of photos and email anyway, right?

How to Right Click

"Some things are worth repeating," says John Carter,  "so here is an excerpt from Mac OSX Snow Leopard, the missing manual."

How to Right-Click

Every Windows computer comes with a two-button mouse. The left button clicks normally; the right button summons a shortcut menu containing commands for whatever you clicked. The Mac has shortcut menus, too, of course, but they’re not quite as necessary as they are in Windows, where the shortcut menu is often the only place you’ll find a certain command.

So when you’re running Windows on your Mac, how are you supposed to right-click?

Well, you could get yourself a two-button mouse, of course. It works fine on a Mac (in Windows or in Mac OS X). In fact, most desktop Macs sold since 2006 come with a two-button mouse, called the Mighty Mouse. It doesn’t appear to have two buttons, but you can actually click two different spots on its sloping far side. See page 340 for instructions on turning this feature on. The Mighty Mouse works fine for right-clicking in Windows.

If you have a recent Mac laptop, you can trigger a right-click using a sneaky trick: Put two fingertips on the trackpad, and then click the button. (That’s an option you can turn on or off in the Trackpad panel of System Preferences.)

Alternatively, if that’s too much to learn, just highlight whatever you want to right-click and then press Shift-F10.

If you’re stuck with a one-button Mac mouse, and none of these options works for you, use the Apple Mouse Utility program for Windows. (You can download it from this book’s “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com.) It lets you Control-click to simulate a right-click while you’re running Windows."

Safari - Adobe Reader Problem Solved

Trying to open a Review on our PMUG site  David Passell got only a dark grey screen.  He describes the problem and solution here. He was running Safari Browser (version 4.0.5) running under Snow Leopard on his Mac Mini.  He had previously tried to open the Review with Firefox and "with a minor annoyance it displayed very well." The solution he found at this link.  He had to set Safari to run in 32 bit mode, and he found that by default, the Safari browser runs in 64 bit mode, which is incompatible with Adobe Reader.

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Edit Your Google Calendar From iCal

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Art Gorski passes along helpful information, "Apple's iCal has long had the ability to subscribe to publicly shared Google Calendars, allowing you to view these calendars in iCal. This still required the owner to login to Google to edit these calendars. The Snow Leopard version of iCal has added the ability to sync with Google Calendars, allowing the owner to edit these calendars in iCal and having the changes automatically sent to the Google Calendar. To do this, select the menu iCal > Preferences and click on the Accounts tab. Next, click on the '+' button at the bottom of the window to add a new account. Enter your Google Email address and password credentials, select 'Google' from the pulldown menu, and click the Create button. Under the 'Delegation' tab you can specify which of your Google calendars you want to appear in iCal."

Music You May Remember

On a cheerier note, Jim Hamm writes, "If you enjoy listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, here is a link to where you can listen to their last album, completely free, 64 minutes of their recording with the Prague Symphony Orchestra, released after Mary's death. I'm listening to it as I type this, and does it bring back memories of listening to them years ago."

Fake Apple Store Malicious Spam

Jim Hamm sends this warning: "Here's a spamming attempt to be aware of if you use Apple's App Store: 'Websense Security Labs™ ThreatSeeker™ Network has discovered that Apple's App Store has become the latest target for email attacks and spam. App Store is the service provided by Apple Inc. as a platform to purchase and download applications for iPhone®, iPod touch®, and iPad™. The attack comes in the form of a fake invoice email.'"   Read the full story here.

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Mac Fonts

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"Ever wondered what your Mac fonts would look like when they're viewed with different system and browser combinations?" John Carter asks.  Then he passes along some suggestions:  "Check out the list of common fonts to (almost) all versions of Windows & Mac equivalents here, then scroll down on that page to see the contributions by others that show images of what the fonts look like on different platforms and browsers. This proves that what you see is not always what others get.

John discovered that Courier New Regular and Courier New Bold were not installed on his Mac, so he had to scrounge around for them. If you need those fonts (Tax Cut requires them), send John a message and he'll fix you up.

"Check out what fonts you have with the application 'Font Book.' You'll even see a sample of what the font looks like. There's a chance that you have duplicate fonts or corrupt fonts on your Mac that you don't know about. Use Font Book to run a validation on all your fonts, find and disable the duplicates, find and delete the corrupt fonts. You may need to replace the corrupt fonts if you can find a source for them (maybe on your installation disc).

"Fonts are installed in three places on the Mac: /System/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, and ~/Library/Fonts (the ~ represents your home folder). Your home path location is for fonts that are unique to you (not seen by other logins on the Mac); this is where duplicate fonts might be found."

Former Member Writes Us

An email from a former PMUG member now living in Florida arrived today. Susan Smith writes from Englewood, Florida:  "I was a member of PMUG from around the years 2000 to 2004 or somewhere in between."  (She was the treasurer for a couple of years.)

Susan continues, "If you don't remember me, I was the one with all the little girls (who, by the way, are now 13, 13 and 15 years old!)  I miss Prescott, desperately, but like the rain here in Englewood, Florida.  Will return one day, and when I do, I will re-up my membership to PMUG!  I will be sure to check out your web site now and then (very nice!)  Take care, 'hi' to all."   If you want to reply email Susan.

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Finding a Bargain

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Today both De Prez Allen Laudenslager and David Passell sent us links to the same discount software for "10 Top Mac Apps." David found the same bargain at MacUpdate. Allen comments that one app in this software group is Parallels 5 that was demonstrated at this month's meeting. David remarks, "If something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is."   So, see what you think.

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Migrating From Windows to Mac

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If you or a friend are going to migrate from PC to a Mac here's what you want to know.  John Carter is our guide, "The easiest way to migrate from a Windows platform to the Mac is to use Parallels. This is accomplished simply by installing and launching the Parallels Transport Agent on the Windows machine, and then installing Parallels on the Mac and launching the Parallels Transport application on the Mac and selecting the method of transfer (USB, network, or external drive). When the two programs start talking to each other, Parallels will create a Windows partition on the Mac and transfer everything (all applications and all data files) from the Windows machine to the Mac. The install disk for Windows may be required.

"The entire transfer can take up to four hours or more depending on how much has to be transferred and what mode of transfer you use (USB, network, or external drive).

"If you do not own Parallels, purchase the Parallels Switch To Mac edition, which includes the USB transport cable, for $99.99 from Parallels."  John is reassuring, "The migration process is quite simple and easy to follow, but if you feel uneasy about doing the migration yourself, then email John Carter.

Re: Ways to Find It

John Carter to the rescue! He points out some important factors in "Ways to Find It," which was posted earlier today. (Scroll down to find this earlier posting.)
          "Please be careful when using Search to find images (especially when using the 'All images' button under 'Search For' in the left panel of Finder). The Search For  > All images will show results for all images in the iPhoto Library as well as images contained within application resources, which could number in the thousands. The result is a bit confusing as you might think there are images on your system that you did not put there or that there are duplicate images. You do NOT want to touch those images.
          "To identify the path where the image is located, look carefully at the bottom of the Finder. The path will look something like this:

"Or, it might look like this:

"In the latter case, you need to hover over each path element to see what it is.
"So please pay attention to the path and ignore anything that is part of iPhoto Library or an application."