, , ,

iTravel is Coming!

, , ,

       Watch for convenience and simplicity:  iTravel is coming.  Jim Hamm found this interesting article here.  The writer gives a glimpse of the future with iTravel.  He states that Apple has been granted a patent for a service that will use near-field communication (NFC) so you'll just wave your iDevice near the reader to check in or board the plane.  It seems the function will be handled by Passbook, one of the new features of iOS 6 to be released this fall.  Read the article for more details.

Latest iPhone Rumors

        Here's something interesting from Jim Hamm, "There's lots of rumors about what the next iPhone might look like and contain. Here's one speculation from InfoWorld that makes some logical sense. 
        "The biggest change, if it should occur, that would negatively affect our household is the reduction in size of the 30-pin dock connector. We have too many radios and other 'stuff' that fits the exiting 30-pin opening. A slightly larger screen would be nice, but I don't want the iPhone to grow any larger than it presently is —well, maybe a tad would be okay. It's comfortable to hold now, but if it got too big then it could become unwieldy."
       So, stay tuned for the next chapter . . . 

,

Upgrading to Mountain Lion?

,

        Getting ready for Mountain Lion, Jim Hamm shares some helpful advice, "If you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion, the TidBITS newsletter is offering two books for a discounted price of $10 each until Mountain Lion is released. At that time the book price increases to $15 each. You can read more about the offer in the following link.
        Jim follows up with "If you're planning to upgrade to Mountain Lion later this month, here is a Macworld article with preparatory steps to take before 'roaring' off to that new OS."

, , ,

Malware Attacks PowerPC or Intel Mac with Rosetta

, , ,

        Ever on the alert to help Mac users, Prez Art Gorski sends this info:  "Note that this malware cannot affect the latest version of Mac OS X. It is a PowerPC binary, which means it can only run on an old PowerPC Mac or an Intel Mac with Rosetta installed. Note also the Mac dialog box shown, which warns you not to trust this! That's why it's called social engineering, it depends on you clicking on it when you shouldn't."  Here's the article. 

,

Cell Phone Costs

,

     Save money — sounds almost as good as FREE.  Jim Hamm to the rescue.  He's found a very important article with warnings we need to read and heed.  See here.  He explains, "If you use a cell phone, you may want to read this article about third-party vendors somehow adding subscriptions to your service. Subscriptions that you don't want and didn't subscribe to, and which increase your monthly cost. I don't understand how this can happen, but according to the article, it can. I notice that AT&T (and maybe other carriers) permit a subscriber to place a block on their service so this can't happen. We've not had a problem yet, that I'm aware of, but I plan to call AT&T and place a block on our service.
        "The other thing to do is review your monthly bill carefully." 

, , ,

Mac Dictionary Will Speak to You

, , ,

        It started with reading a news article about the horrible flesh-eating disease.  Wondering how much info the Mac Dictionary would give I looked up that long word "necrotizing fasciitis" and my curiosity just got started.  Would Dictionary read it to me?
        Yes, Mac will read aloud to you.  You can use this feature in Dictionary, Pages, Word for Mac, even news you highlight from Google, other Internet sites, and . . . get this!  You can listen to the PMUG newsblog being read aloud to you.

        Go to Apple in the menu bar across the top of the screen.  Click System preferences, under System click Speech.  On the Text to Speech tab, select the Speak selected text when the key is pressed check box.  Click Set Key, then press the combination of keys that you want to use to hear the text read aloud.  Then click OK.    I decided to use Command + S.  Now the fun of trying it out, here and there.  
        Oh, here's more about that flesh-eating disease.  Click on Dictionary, choose  Wikipedia and type in "flesh-eating disease."  Up it comes with medical explanations, photos, and links to further resources.  There's even a list of notable people who have been afflicted with it.  

, ,

How to Upgrade to Mountain Lion -- FREE

, ,

        Well, it's the e-book that's FREE, but that's good!  The e-book that John Carter tells about will be offered as raffle prizes at our July 14 general PMUG meeting.  Here's the info:  "Apple is poised to release OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in July, and the people at Take Control want to help smooth your transition to Apple's next big cat. Because many of you will want to upgrade soon, Take Control is offering Joe Kissell's "Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion" for sale now, with Matt Neuburg's "Take Control of Using Mountain Lion" available for pre-order as a single-page placeholder that you can use to get the full title once Mountain Lion ships."
        John sends the link to the article about it here.  The winner receives the e-book on an 8GB thumb drive.  

, ,

Where's My Computer's Library?

, ,

       John Carter was telling about a problem with Adobe.  "After allowing Adobe to install updates, I discovered I could no longer view a PDF file in Safari.  I found the following fix in the Apple Support Communities:  Try removing the following files:

       /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin

      /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin

      OK, John, but how do you find the Library on Mac?  So, here's the info we need. 

Lion reserves will NOT display Library. Snow Leopard and below lets you see it.

Regardless of what version of OS you have, the one way that works for everyone is:
1. Open Terminal (type "terminal" in Spotlight to get it)
2. At the command line, enter the following commands, one at a time. When the first command is entered, you will be asked for your login password, but not for the second command.
When you first open Terminal, the command line may look something like this:
jcarter@JC-Mac ~
$ 
or this:
jcarter@JC-Mac ~ $
Regardless, the command line is identified by the dollar sign. You start typing after the dollar sign.
Here are the two commands:
sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin
sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin
You can copy and paste these two lines directly into Terminal (one at a time) and get the same results. Every command has to be followed by pressing the Return key.
        So, there we are, thanks to John.  Another question answered! 
, ,

How Long Will CDs Last?

, ,

        You didn't expect CDs and DVDs to last forever . . . but how long will they still be good?  John Carter grabs our attention with this information, "Here's an interesting article that attempts to explain the reasons why you might not want to rely on CDs and DVDs for an archive of your favorite images, videos, and documents. The life span of such a media is dependent on more than just how the CD/DVD is made - mold and rot are also factors."  This MakeUseOf article was posted yesterday, and it tells how to check your disks for deterioration.

Introducing Our Officers for 2012-2013

PRESIDENT ART GORSKI  
         Art will continue to serve as President this year!  We appreciate his leadership for PMUG.  
        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. 
VICE-PRESIDENT DAVE ROTHGERY
      Dave first encountered the computer era when he had to learn FORTRAN in 1969 at Cleveland State University. That is where his programing career started and quickly ended. After graduating from U of Illinois, he spent the next thirty-five years selling technology products to Fortune 100 companies. After starting with Xerox, he moved on to represent companies like, Vydec, Exxon Information Systems, NBI, Inc, Octel Communication Corp, Lucent Technologies, Innerwireless and Adomo.  The products and systems he sold included items like Xerox copiers, word processing systems, local area networks, corporate voice mail systems, in-building wireless systems and unified messaging systems.  
        In 2008 he retired and moved from the Chicago area to Prescott and spends time as a SCORE counselor helping entrepreneurs start a business or improve their business, attending OLLI classes and learning more about Macs.
        After working with PC’s for twenty-five years, he finally migrated to Apple’s Mac platform ten months ago and as the saying goes, “doesn’t want to look back.”  He says the PMUG group has been an excellent forum to shorten the learning curve with Mac and to learn all the shortcuts that make using a Mac so enjoyable.  His primary organization responsibility as Vice President of PMUG is to determine topics and find presenters of those topics for each monthly meeting. Please send him your ideas on topics you would like to learn more about.


SECRETARY BOBBIE PASTOR
      Bobbie continues in the position of Secretary! Bobbie has been with the PMUG group since 2005.    She remembers that it took three months to get her name on the books and a name tag.  She has strived to welcome new members and have their name tags made by the next meeting.  She has added many new tasks to the job.  
      Bobbie's skill development as secretary to PMUG has been basically "seat-of-the-pants".  She did complete two years of junior college with a secretarial major and worked for Uniroyal Corp as a production secretary for three foremen.  Her observation was that the ladies working on the production floor made more money, didn't have to buy clothes for work and NEVER took the work home to finish!  So, Bobbie quit that job and got a job with Laura Scudders picking and packing potatoes chips.  It was right down the street from where she lived and she wore old clothes that had to be hung in a special closet because of the smell of chips and peanut butter.  But she was making twice as much money.  This production experience qualified her to apply to Kimberly Clark in Fullerton, Ca where she worked for 33 years and retired with a pension!
       Bobbie sold her home at the top of the market and had a huge garage sale on everything else.  She moved to Prescott, AZ in 2004.  She had gone through Prescott on the way to Sedona in 1991 and fell in love with the town square.  
        She was catapulted into the PMUG Secretarial position in 2005 (fourth meeting) because the current Secretary was moving out of state, and has developed the job so well, that no one would even think of volunteering to take that detailed-oriented, time-consuming  job over, on a bet!  Bobbie is Secretary for life!
        Besides being Secretary and organizing the annual picnic, Bobbie has taken on the task of offering Beginning Mac SIGs.  She has had some down time on that task this last year.  She plans to resume this classes, however,  later this year.  Due to the Library charging for rooms, Bobbie will hold her SIGs in her home with a limit of 10 members.  She has to catch up on the new operating system and install it on her computer as well as the club's computer.
Bobbie is Vice-mum for her Red Hats chapter.  She is creating a free website just for the Diamond Chics.  She loves to garden and has a very high maintenance landscape.  She is interested in creating photos and takes John's Digital SIG every month.  She shares her life with a "special needs" Jack/Rat terrier named Archie.  Archie is totally blind and socially challenged, but in spite of his peccadilloes, he has volunteered to man the projector  during our SIGs.

TREASURER DAVID PASSELL
      Another term as treasurer for David; three cheers!    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.
       David is also a member of the PCS (Prescott Computer Society), Yavapai Amateur Radio Club (YARC), and does video recording for his church. 

Making Travel Arrangements

       "Here is an interesting observation on Mac users' choice of travel arrangements via Orbitz," David Passell notices.  "Either they think Mac users are stupid, or we just have better taste."  Might make for an interesting conversation with David.
        Here Jim Hamm jumps in and labels it correctly; it's "data mining" and it results in the Mac user being steered to a more expensive hotel.  This is what Wall Street Journal has to say.  Jim closes with, "I can't make up my mind whether to be 'ticked off' about this, or smugly smile and say, well, Orbitz does recognize 'Creme de la Creme'. . . (grin)."

,

Those Helpful People at the Apple Store

,

        Jim Hamm makes some observations, "Working at any retail store is tough: long hours, short pay, mostly on your feet, dealing with the public —which is tough in itself. Here's an article giving a peek at what it's like to work in an Apple Store.
        "If you've been in an Apple store you've noticed all the personnel are young — one never sees any gray hair (other than from the customers). Here's a comment from the article with a reason for this,  'Generally, an Apple employee is someone who can afford to live cheaply, is not bothered by the nonstop commotion of an Apple Store and is comfortable with technology.  People who fit that bill tend to be in their early or mid-20s, the former managers said. They typically don’t have children and many don’t have spouses, which means they are relatively inexpensive to cover with health insurance.'"

        Jim concludes, "It appears Apple store employees use this experience as a springboard to other jobs with more of a future."
        Trying to (unsuccessfully) open that link posted above a new article from Los Angeles Times dated 6-23 comes up: headline "Did NY Times Report Drive Apple to be Extra Generous to Workers?"
        This just in:  Jim Hamm sends this link about employees of Apple stores and this one from NY Times.   Click where it says Read. 
, ,

Some Free Apps for Your Computer

, ,

         There's that word FREE that gets our attention.  John Carter has found some free apps.  Read on.
        Are you a PC person besides a PMUG person?  You've probably noted that John is a PC officer who also heads a joint PC/PMUG Special Interest Group (SIG).  He's also our Webmaster for our PMUG site. John sends this link to a list of 50 alternatives to see if there's a free app that might be helpful for you.  When you open this page, do Command + F for Find and enter Mac in the search box.  There are 31 places where Mac is mentioned in this article.
       John says, "Don't forget to read the user-submitted comments at the end for additional insights."  Perhaps you also want to check out the Prescott PC site.

Rumor of Changes to iPhone

         The headline "Fury at Apple's 'rip-off' plan to make ALL iPhone accessories obsolete by changing design of socket" grabbed our attention. See the article for yourself.  Jim Hamm commented that he'd seen other blogs with the same rumor, "If true, it will affect us as well. We own several radios with docking stations that fit our present iPhone 4 but won't work at all with the new iPhone if the connector is changed. Do I like this? No. Do I understand that electronic devices change and, hopefully, improve? Yes. Think about all the people that had devices that played 8-track tapes. Ditto for cassette tapes. Then CDs came out. Think about all the equipment that became obsolete with the release of each new device.
        "I don't think Apple is changing devices to be mean or increase sales of new accessories. They probably have a valid technological reasons for making the change. Will be interesting to see what Apple comes out with." 
        Here Jim gives some advice, "When people complain about Apple's closed-loop system, high prices, technological advances, and marching to their own drum, I tell them if they don't like what Apple does, that's okay. Don't complain. Buy something else." 

      But, Jim, do you suppose someone will come up with an adaptor or connection device that will allow the two to work OK?  Succinctly Jim answers, "Possibly."  So, we'll watch and see. 

MiFi at WalMart?

        "Here's an interesting service that apparently will soon be offered at WalMart: MiFi with no expiration date. This type of service isn't new, but having no expiration date (if used once per year) and no monthly bill (or contract) sounds intriguing for casual use of the Internet when you're traveling," Jim Hamm says. 
        Have you heard about MiFi?  Here's an article.