Rumors are flying this morning, and Jim Hamm helps us out. Possibly Lion will be released tomorrow or Thursday. He sends this link from 9to5mac revealing rumblings about Lion distributing caching centers. It suggests that customers who walk into the Apple store could purchase Lion from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes, rather than hours it takes over a normal broadband connection. This article reveals that Find My Mac, a new Lion feature for locating and wiping your Mac remotely, also works when one boots into the recovery partition. This lets a Mac owner use another machine to locate and wipe out their stolen Mac's hard drive even if the person using it is not logged in.
THIS JUST IN: This article quotes Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer that Mac OS Lion launches tomorrow, Wednesday, July 20. And this from Apple Insider says Lion launches tomorrow, and tells about Migration Assistant Update, needed for the update to Lion.
Welcome to Our New Ambassador
Stepping up to volunteer to serve as PMUG Ambassador is Ward Stanke. Let's get acquainted!
Ward's introduction to computers was a FORTRAN programming course using an IBM 360 with punch cards. This occurred during his undergraduate days at the University of New Mexico where he earned a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1969.
He spent nine years in the Air Force doing research and development in computer architecture while picking up his MS in Electrical Engineering. The personal computer bug bit him early and he played with Motorola 6800 and 6809-based home-brew systems in assembly language.
After leaving the Air Force, Ward moved into the aerospace industry and later into the application software development industry. He bought and programmed an Apple II (and even made some prototype add-in boards for it.) His first Mac was a 128K original Mac bought about two months after it was introduced in February of 1984. He wrote his first programs for the Mac on that 128K machine in Apple's BASIC and C.
Ward worked on a number of commercial Macintosh software applications in various roles ranging from developer (programmer) to technical lead to software architect to manager. Some of the products he has worked on include Roxio's Toast, Quicken for the Mac, and installers for a number of Adobe products as well as several other much more obscure products.
He officially retired in 2009 and moved from Silicon Valley to Prescott where he continues to program his Mac "just for the fun of it." His current machines include a dual processor quad-core Mac Pro, and a MacBook. His wife has an iMac and an iPad.
Ward fills the position held by Roger Lakner who asked us to let him retire. We appreciate all Roger has done, and look forward to working with Ward.
Making Your Computer Run Faster
Responding to a question about a "slow" computer, John Carter gives ideas on what to check and what to do.
"A faster computer doesn’t actually improve computer performance that you would notice.
"Most people who say their computer is too slow are really suffering from a slow Internet access and not a slow computer. To confirm this, do a speed test. If your Internet download speed is around 1 MB/s, you need to increase your Internet speed, and I recommend nothing less than 5 MB/s if browsing the Internet is a priority for you.
"Another way to test your computer performance is to determine how long it takes just to launch an application that does NOT access the Internet. Every Mac comes with Pages. It takes about 12 seconds for Pages to come up on my brand new laptop (2.8 GHz, 8MB memory). Some people would say that is slow. Once you have launched an application and then exit, the next time you launch that same application during that same login session, it will come up in about 2 seconds. The thing to know is that it is always slow to launch any application the first time during a session on any computer.
"If you want to do something to improve your computer performance, then you need to do some maintenance on your computer. There are several applications that can do this. Just do a Google search on 'mac maintenance' and take your pick. Some are free. One of the things to read is “Five Mac maintenance myths.”
"If you have a large hard drive (say, 250GB) and it is almost full (say, less than 50GB free space), that can also slow your computer down. It’s important to clean out the old logs, the temporary files, and other stuff. Any one of the maintenance applications mentioned about will do that.
"Another way to really boost the performance of your computer is to replace the internal hard drive with a SSD (Solid State Drive). It’s about $500 for a 240GB drive (prices are expected to drop soon). What this does is boot up almost instantly, launch all your applications almost instantly, and make all your applications run super fast, but it won’t access the Internet any faster (except for those web pages that are cached locally). If you have a lot of personal data files (movies, photos), then you’ll also need to turn your old internal hard drive into an external hard drive so all your personal files can be moved there, instead of taking up room in the internal hard drive.
Here John closes with a personal opinion, "And to be honest with you, I thought my new laptop would be really fast. Compared to my three year-old iMac, it’s only a tiny bit faster. So, unless you think you really need to be able to upgrade beyond your current OS of 10.5, you can stay with your current computer for at least another four years. After that, you should really consider getting the latest model."
Tagging on to John's recommendations take a look at finding out what files are taking up all that space; see this Macworld article.
Widgets That Make You Say, "Wow"
Quick little smidgeons of information, awaiting your summons. Touch that magical key F-4 and there they are, the chosen few, popping up in front of anything else you have up on your screen. (Click on the illustrations to enlarge the screenshot.)
Choose them from a long list of categories at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ There are thousands to choose from! What fun to explore the possibilities.
You'll see that many are free, so how nifty is that! They're simple to add, and when you change your mind, they're easy to delete.
A Google search for Mac:widgets brings up other websites with comments and suggestions. You’d want to specify a time limit under “Any time” so that your search could have a reasonable date. Here I wanted to check Past Year, but there are other specifications at your finger tips.
What are the Top Widgets today?
When you’re done viewing the widgets on your screen just click anywhere on the screen off of a widget and you’re back in business with whatever.
Even if you’re satisfied with the widgets you already have you might spend some productive moments viewing what else is available.
Some, like Astronomy Picture of the Day (below) have a place to click (here is is D) to show you the reverse side for more info.
Click on the X at the bottom left on your screen and bring up a wide view of your choices. Here’s just a few for my illustration.
Here’s a view of the corner of my screen with 5 of my widgets. They can be dragged to any position on the screen. Here mine are in front of a blank Pages page. Widgets come up in front of whatever you already have open.
The National Doppler Radar widget enlarges when it’s clicked.
What widgets do you use?
(The above is today's PMUG handout. If you missed the meeting we MISSED you. If you were there now you see the color version of the screenshots. See you later! -- Elaine)
Compare Four Social Media
Compare Facebook vs. Twitter vs. LinkedIn vs. Google+ with the help of this article. Jim Hamm observes, "In the article the author comments that although Google+ is new and hasn’t yet found a niche, some proponents surmise that it might end up being a Facebook for grownups. I’ve only used Google+ briefly and it will be interesting to see how it develops. I’m a big fan of Google’s Gmail, Google Reader and Google News, so maybe this will fit right in the lineup. All these, plus more, can be accessed on the Google+ website."
A Look at Google+ . . . Updated
Here's a Computerworld look at the many features of the new Google+ which declares it will replace email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, blogging, RSS, Gmail and email newsletters. The writer says that spammers can't copy, retain and sell your email address. He says the term "social networking" is not an adequate term for Google+. Jim Hamm sent us this info. Just now (7-12) this PCWorld article tells about security risk issues involving an app that allows Firefox and Chrome users to view Facebook data within Google+.
Worried About Dropbox?
Here's the latest on Dropbox from Jim Hamm. "If you use Dropbox, as I do, you might have been concerned a few days ago when they updated their Terms of Service -- I certainly was. It appeared that by using Dropbox they owned everything we put in there. Not good. They are now backpedaling quite a bit, and this article gives an explanation of the subsequent revisions to Dropbox's T of S. Take a read and see if you feel more comfortable using Dropbox." (Earlier postings about Dropbox are here, dated 6-2-11 and 7-3-11.)
After questioning him about encryption Jim expounds further this morning (7-9), "Yes, there’s a Mac version for TrueCrypt available. If I were going to store sensitive data in Dropbox I might try TrueCrypt. Reading through the instructions it’s a bit of work to use TrueCrypt, though. Not something I want or plan to do with the data I use Dropbox for. I don’t like the idea of using any ‘Cloud’ service to store sensitive data, say, like a password to Amazon or a bank account. I keep that stored on my own Mac."
Possible Problems with Upcoming Lion
Making us aware of possible problems with the release of Lion Jim Hamm explains, "While reading a blog about the coming upgrade to OS X Lion, here's what one blogger had to say about the upgrade only being available via download:
'While the issue of distributing Lion to people who don't have adequate bandwidth is one thorny and important problem, I also expect the strain of Apple's servers to be excessive as millions of people flock to download the upgrade the first few days it's available. Which will mean a torrent of complaints about failed downloads. I think Apple is walking into a large hornet's nest here. It's hard to imagine they are unaware of the matter, but as yet they've not acknowledged it publicly. This could turn into a debacle that would dwarf the Mobile Me roll out. In which case, Apple will have once again been too cute - and too smug - for their own good.'
Jim goes on to offer his opinion, "I must say I agree with his/her comments. It seems to me it would be much better if Apple offered, in addition to the download, the option to purchase a CD for the Lion upgrade, and charge a slightly higher price for it. On the download side, Apple could spread the load on their servers a bit by saying if your last name starts with A thru D, for example, your download window is July...to July...Then E thru H it is July...to July..., and so on.
"How long will it take to download 4GB of data (the approximate size of OS X Lion)? That depends on several factors: the speed of your internet connection; the load on your ISP network; the load on Apple's servers; et al? As an example: nominally I have a 10 Mbps connection speed. However, I was watching the download speed of the upgrade I did to OS X 10.6.8 and iStat Menus (in my Toolbar) only showed a download speed of approximately 1 Mbps, and that fluctuated around. So, my download time may range anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on what assumption of download speed I use.
Jim concludes, "It seems to me that many Mac users are not going to be happy with that download scenario. I'm not happy about it, and I haven't even started the process...(grin)...I hope Apple doesn't stub their toe big time on this upgrade."
Tips for Keychain Access
"Whether you are a guru or a beginner, what follows is something that every Mac user needs to know about Keychain Access." John Carter has some important information to share! From here on John is being quoted.
"There is a simple way to change the administrative password, and this is what crooks do when they steal someone’s computer, but you need the install disk (or a copy of it). If you don’t have the installation disk, follow these instructions to create a new admin account (you cannot use the same name as before). The instructions to reset the administrative password using the install disk are as follows:
• Insert the Mac OS X Install disc and restart the computer.
• When you hear the startup tone, hold down the C key until you see the spinning gear.
• When the Installer appears, choose Utilities > Reset Password. [Look in the Menu bar at the top of the screen for Utilities.]
• Follow the onscreen instructions to change the password.
• Quit the Installer and restart your computer while holding down the [left] mouse button to eject the disc.
Be sure to change your login password in Keychain Access to match your new admin password. Here’s how to do it;
• Open Keychain Access located in Applications/Utilities, and select the keychain in the Keychains list (click Show Keychains if the list is not open).
• Choose Edit >"Change Password for Keychain 'login’.” (The name of the keychain in the menu matches the name of the selected keychain. If you selected the keychain that unlocks when you log in, the name you see is “login.”)
• If the keychain is locked, type the password to unlock it.
• Type the current password for this keychain.
• Type a new password, then type it again to verify.
• Click OK.
You can use Password Assistant to help you choose a new password. Click the key button to the right of the Password field to see how secure your new password is.
When you open Keychain Access, you will notice something like the following in the left panel:
You have several keychains in Keychain Access. Each of these keychains can have its own password. The keychain you need to change the password on is the login keychain. Make sure it is highlighted (selected) when you choose “Edit > Change Password for Keychain ‘login’.” If it is not selected, then the word ‘login’ will be replaced with the name of one of the other keychains in the above list.
All of the entries in the right panel are for storing the passwords for different applications, services, or Internet accounts. Do NOT mess with these unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing. The only way anything in Keychain Access gets deleted is if you do it manually, so be aware that things can hang around forever there. For example, if you closed your account with your bank, then you can safely delete the keychain entry for that account. If you changed your password for a specific Internet account, you will have two keychain entries for that account and you can safely delete the older one, but there are exceptions to what appear to be duplicate entries.
A keychain entry might be appear to be duplicated more than once, but each keychain entry was for a different web page for that same website (my bank has several different pages for logging in, and each page needs its own keychain entry). So be real careful about deleting entries. When in doubt, don’t.
In one case, I couldn’t quite remember the right password for one Internet account, so as I entered each password they were being “remembered" in Keychain Access. It’s a simple matter of deleting all the wrong passwords and keeping the right one.
Every keychain entry has two sections. The first section you see when you open the keychain entry. This is the Attributes section. The other section is Access Control. When you click on that button, a list of Names shows in the panel. These are the applications that are allowed to use the password without needing your specific permission. All other applications access the password depending on the settings in this section.
When you click on the plus (+) button, you can actually add other applications to the list that don’t need permission to access that password. Highlighting the name of an application and clicking on the minus (-) removes that name from the allowed list.
For more on this topic, simply search with keywords like, “mac 10.__ how to ___” and fill in the blanks with your own criteria.
And here John lets us catch our breath. His quotation is completed -- at least for now.
Considering Dropbox
Whether or not you've made friends with Dropbox it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with it. Here's some very important information, just released by Dropbox on 7-1-11, notifying me by email on 7-2-11 at 7:49 pm. By this time there were so many complaints and comments posted there it would take 114 pages to print it. The blog explains TOS, (Terms of Service), privacy policy and security. By continuing to use Dropbox you automatically agree to the new TOS which takes effect 7-15-11.
Anticipating that Lion
Yes, the Lion is coming soon. Jim Hamm wants us to know more, so look at Apple's site to view over 250 new features in Lion.
FREE Video Tutorials
"Are you hungry for more video tutorials for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad?" John Carter asks. Read on, and note that wonderful word FREE.
Here's what John wants us to know: "ScreenCastsOnline posts a new video tutorial every week. Don McAllister is the host and founder of ScreenCastsOnline.
"You can get three FREE tutorials just for the asking — and no obligation. To become a member and be able to download and keep as many tutorials as your hard disc and brain can hold will cost you $57 for a 3-month membership (marked down from $249) and renew for 12 months for just $45. The tutorials are DRM FREE and yours to keep.
"Don has already published over 300 tutorials covering 60 topics since 2005, and I imagine you can download every one of them well within that 3-month period.
"Don also has a blog that you can follow, and his most recent blog expresses his disappointment over the latest release of Final Cut Pro X. This particular blog is a 10-minute video that he recorded, probably with his iPhone, as he drives home from a training session on FCP X. Remarkable!"
John closes with this: "I viewed one of his videos on ForkLift2, and I am impressed both with ForkLift2 and Don’s professional presentation."
What a Mouse!
Your wrist might appreciate this new kind of a mouse. Art Gorski alerts us so we can view the large pictures and read about a vertical mouse here. If you're interested be sure to scroll half-way down the page to see the warning about the mini-disc that comes with it, but is meant only for a PC.
Learn About Facebook
If you or your kids are users of Facebook Jim Hamm found this link to a 4 page tutorial that he says might be helpful.
107 Best Websites on the Web
"If you've got some time to waste, ah, explore around a bit," announces Jim Hamm, "here's a link to what one blog refers to as the 107 best websites on the web." You'll find them posted in 20 categories with links to views and reviews. See if you agree.
What Happened to "Never"?
“Never” doesn’t work anymore on Safari, on Google. Not wanting to allow Cookies to establish their territories on my computer I have clicked on “Only from Sites I Visit” under Preferences > Security only when I want to post to my blogs, as is required by blogspot. Then, as soon as I’m done I’d go to Security, click Show Cookies and choose Remove All. Next, I’d promptly do Done and change Accept Cookies to “Never.” After that I could check back at any time and see that “Never” had done its job. No cookies were listed.
Now, within the past week or so, “Never” doesn’t live up to its name. A list of websites have found some unknown-to-me loophole and helped themselves to Cookies, showing up in that list. I do Remove All, and select “Never” again, and go to look at the weather, news, etc. When I check again later there’s a new crop of websites that have set up shop.
Does this have something to do with the Flash Cookies that Jim Hamm had discussed earlier? Scroll down and click on Cookies on the list of Labels on this newsblog. See the previously posted entries.
I went to the Adobe site to assure myself that the settings were still on.
Now it was time to see if people much smarter than me had experienced “Never” Cookies. To make sure only recent articles would come up I chose “Past Year” under AnyTime on the left side of the Google page after entering key words in Search.
The Apple Discussion group suggests going to Cookies.plist and deselecting AutoFill.
The Macworld forum has some complaints about Safari permitting cookies.
On Arstechnica someone mentioned a Cookies.plist in the Library.
Where is Library? Spotlight doesn’t list it. Go to Finder and click the little house icon in Places. There’s Library with a folder named Cookies. Brings up a list of Geek-talk.
So, I close here, uncertain as to the solution. Do you have ideas and experiences to share? I’m going to go and check my unwanted Cookies right now.
Congratulations to Officers Elected Last Week
The annual election for officers was held at last week's PMUG meeting. Congratulations and thanks for using your talents to make Prescott Mac User Group a vibrant, helpful, and friendly organization!
PRESIDENT ART GORSKI
Art steps up from the VP position to De Prez this year! Thanks, Art! He started with punch cards and FORTRAN programming in a freshman year college class in 1969. After getting his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering he became interested in the microcomputers that were just coming out in the late 1970's. He took a continuing education class at the local university and learned how to program the 6502 microprocessor in hexadecimal machine language. Since this was the same processor used in the new Apple II computer, Art ended up purchasing one in January of 1979. It's serial number 660, and he still owns it.
Joining the local computer club, he decided to change careers and go into programming for a living and wrote programs in assembly language and FORTRAN for real-time flight simulators. He bought an original Macintosh 128 in early 1985, and eventually upgraded it to a Mac Plus. Later Macs included a PowerBook 100, PowerBook 2300, PowerMac 7200/90, and a G4 Cube (still owns it).
Art retired and moved to Prescott in 2007 and spends his time running a couple of websites and programming Mac applications using Real Studio. He has a very sophisticated gigabit home network with a network attached storage server. He was Vice President for PMUG last year.
VICE PRESIDENT HOWARD LA PITTUS
Howard was De Prez last year for PMUG and moves to VP so he can use his PR talents in this position. He is semi-retired, doing consulting work for companies that have federal government contracts. Howard attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles, majoring in commercial photography. After leaving school he was a free-lance photographer doing fashion photography and covering the entertainment industry. Yes, he was a paparazzi, covering such Hollywood events as the Golden Globe Awards, movie premiers and various entertainment social events.
Howard has over 40 years (yes, he is old) of diversified business management experience in the commercial film processing, photographic equipment, consumer catalog, and educational supply industries.
One of the most exciting and rewarding experiences came when he had the responsibility of managing the JPL account in Pasadena. This involved the acquisitions, delivery and installation of photographic processing equipment that was used to process the first pictures from the moon.
Howard, his wife Carol and dog Oliver moved to Prescott in 2005 from PA. His first computer experience was running an IBM Tab Card installation which including writing computer programs in RPG in the 60’s. (Yes, he is old!) Howard switched from a PC to a Mac in 2005. His hobbies include photography, meteorology and stamp collecting. And, “long walks on the beach, smoking his favorite cigar,” he adds.
SECRETARY BOBBIE PASTOR
Continuing as Secretary Bobbie knows what she's doing . . . and she does it well.
After earning her Secretarial major in college Bobbie started at UniRoyal Rubber Company in Santa Ana, California where she did clerical work. From there she worked for Laura Scudders, then Kimberly Clark, retiring thirty-three years later. In 2003, Bobbie retired at 58 ½, sold her house in Placentia and headed to Prescott, AZ. Here she found the Mac User Group, and was “sentenced to being Secretary of PMUG” in 2006. She keeps the books, sends out notices, takes minutes, keeps attendance and has possession of the PMUG computer, projector and files for the club. Along with John Carter and Jim Hamm, she volunteers a Basic Mac SIG for PMUG members.
She loves gardening and has a high maintenance landscape. She is Vice-mum for the Diamond Chics Red Hat chapter. She uses a lot of computer techniques that she has learned from being a member of the club and hopes to get a newsletter and website up for the ladies. Home decorating and photography is of great interest, however, she doesn't seem to find the time for them.
Bobbie lives with her "special needs" fur child, Archie. He is not only blind, but he is socially challenged. He loves to help her in the yard, and one of these days she says she will actually find time to grow vegetables!
TREASURER DAVID PASSELL
Yes, David agreed to serve another term -- lucky for us! David’s degree is from USC in Telecommunications (TV and Radio production) W56 as broadcast engineer/DJ for KUTE in Glendale, CA, then Chief Engineer for FM station WNCN in NYC.
In 1961 he was telecommunications engineer at JPL (analyzing spacecraft data, writing reports, and writing FORTRAN programs). He did technical writing (IBM, Litton, Associated Writers, Conrac) retiring in 1996 from Ameritec, Duarte, CA.
Betty and David came to Prescott in 1996. His Mac history: Apple II - 1978, MAC portable - 1991, Mac TV - 1995. Currently he has a MINI, an iMAC, and a G3. In PMUG since 1997, he’s been President twice and continues as Treasurer.
Know How to do DVDs?
Here's a SOS from David Passell. Anyone want to write and describe the procedure? David is trying to produce a playable DVD from a disk image ... "a DVD in UDF format which I can give to someone with a commercial DVD player. I have done this numerous times before from disk images from DVDs I have made at church, and also have copied from tapes.
"I have a friend that wants copies of the Oprah Finale which I copied from a tape. I made a couple, but lately it seems that I draw a memory blank. I can't remember the procedure. I have burned a .dmg to disk and I get a disk with the .dmg on it which will not play on the machine. I turned the .dmg into a .cdr (CD/DVD master) and when I burn it, I get a disk with the .cdr on it which also will not play. There are just too many 'burn' choices."
iPhoto Help is Here
John Carter to the rescue! After an emailed question about cropping pictures in iPhoto John gives us the step-by-step info we need. The following is straight from him to us.
To crop a picture in iPhoto to send to a print service:
1. In iPhoto, right-click on the photo in the Photos, Event, or Album.
2. Select Edit in iPhoto.
3. Click on the crop tool.
4. Click on Constrain.
5. From the pull-down list of numbers, choose the size of the print you will be ordering. A rectangular box will appear on the photo.
6. Drag the corners or any side to resize the rectangle to include what you want in the photo. Notice that if you attempt to make the box very narrow that it will eventually switch from landscape mode to portrait mode.
7. You can reposition the rectangle by dragging from the inside of the crop box.
8. A Rule Of Thirds grid appears only while you are adjusting the size of the crop box.
9. When you have the desired area selected, click Done.
10. Select File > Export to save the file to a flash drive or thumb drive or on the internal hard drive. Be sure to select Current in the Kind option as this will ensure that you are exporting the edited image.
Now that you have the proper aspect ratio of the photo and supposedly of the desired size, you should also make sure that the dots per inch is set to at least 240dpi. This is done with Preview.
1. Double click on the exported photo from iPhoto to open it in Preview.
2. Select Tools > Adjust Size from the menu.
3. Deselect Resample image (see below). You must do this to before changing the Resolution.
4.
5. Notice that the ratio of width to height is not exactly 6:4, or 0.6667, but it’s close enough (0.6664) - we hope. Change the Resolution to 240 or 300 and select OK to save this setting. This is important! Do not skip this step!
6.
7. Select Tools > Adjust Size from the menu again.
8. Leave Resample image set and change the width or height to the desired final print size.
9. You now have a photo you can send to the printer and get back something to feel good about.
This is rather complex. Is there an application that will give the right aspect ratio, size, and resolution that isn’t so complicated? Yes. Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS can crop and resize the photo to be exactly the right size, aspect ratio, and desired resolution.
To crop a picture in Photoshop to send to a print service:
1. Open the file with Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS.
2. Select the Crop tool.
3. In the menu bar, set the aspect ratio, width, height, and resolution.
4. click to enlarge:
5. Crop the image.
6. Save the image.
Keep Up With Your PMUG, the RSS Way!
If it's logical, easy, and fun --- then it's Mac! You want to keep up with the latest. When you click on RSS you will be notified in your list of email. Here's where you select RSS for the newsblog. Click to enlarge the screen shot.
Here's where you select RSS to get John Carter's posting to www.pmug.us
And this is how it comes up in my email list in Mail. Try it for yourself, and keep up with your PMUG.