In The Jungle, The Mighty Jungle,...

Right after I typed that brilliant title for this month's newsletter, my wife leaned over and said,

"Why are you writing about a jungle?"

"I'm not.  This is about the new operating system that Steve Jobs just announced."

"What's it got to do with a jungle."

"It's a musical reference."

"I'm not sure they're going to get that."

"Are you kidding?  I think everybody and their grandfather has heard that tune. You know, A wimoweh, a-wimoweh a-wimoweh, a wimoweh--"

"Yeah, yeah I got it.  I'm just not sure they're going to get it.  Lions don't even live in the jungle, and what's the deal with all of the big cat names anyway?"

"Don't know.  Steve's got a thing for wild cats, I guess.  The point is that the king of the cats, Lion, Mac OS 10.7, is arriving next month and I wanted a clever way to talk about it."

"Well, I still don't think they'll get it."

"And that's precisely the point I want make."

"That they won't get it?"

"Exactly.  I'm sure we'll get dozens of calls about it and we'll probably say, 'unless you're buying it on a new computer, or consider yourself an adventuresome pioneer with far too much time on your hands, just wait a bit. Patience Grasshopper.'"

"So you're telling your clients not to get it."

"Yes, to wait on the upgrade."

"Why?"

"Well, as cool as Apple is, every new release of an operating system is going to have some kinks to work out."

"It'll be kinky?"

"Yes, kinky in a wholesome frustrating kind of way.  You may not be able to connect with your printer, a lot of your favorite software might not work anymore, iCloud could fail tragically and data could get stuck in a thunderstorm in North Carolina, or you may simply have trouble getting things done because a lot of the buttons and knobs are in different places."

"Well, I'm shocked.  I thought you'd be all fired up about everyone jumping into this brand new operating system the day it comes out."

"Oh, I'm happy to pick up the pom poms when the time comes.  I just don't think it's wise for most of our clients to leap right away.  I'm hoping they'll let us work out the bugs, the kinks, the workarounds, and wait for the high sign when it's safe to come out and play.  Probably sometime in the Fall, just to be on the safe side. Meanwhile, we should be helping them to upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6) as you must be running that before you can upgrade to Lion."

"Wow, your glee is contagious, cheerleader.  Speaking of which, it's your night to do the dishes." 

A wimoweh, a-wimoweh a-wimoweh, a wimoweh
A wimoweh, a-wimoweh a-wimoweh, a wimoweh

Stay tuned and we'll keep you posted.

All the best,

Mick

P.S.  And if you really can't get that song out of your head, here's a link to make sure it embeds itself for another 48 hours:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LBmUwi6mEo

 We have these Pre-Owned Computers for sale.

Call or email for more info

2006 Core Duo Macbook

2008 Macbook Pro

20" G5 iMac

17" G5 iMac 

2006 MacPro w/16GB RAM 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Oh, and if you haven't seen it already, check out our new Downloads Page with some of our favorite software: 

http://www.micksmacs.com/downloads.htm

Defending Your Mac

By now, most of you have heard of this "MAC Defender" malware that's out on the internet this month.  Some of you may have already panicked, rushed out and slathered your beautiful Macs with legitimate anti-virus software.  Sooner or later you’ll be calling and wondering why your speedy Mac has gotten so slow and certain things just don’t work like they used to.  I could say something pithy like, “Well, it’s not as young as it used to be.  Just a natural part of the aging process that one has to accept...,” but I’d just be going for smarmy points there.  Actually, there is no such thing as smarmy points.  They usually count against you.  No, I’d likely say, “Bring it in, we’ll have a look.”  Once on the bench, chances are we’d see that you’d been driving your Mac with the parking brake on.  That’s the burning aroma you’ve been smelling from time to time. 

That’s what anti-virus software does to any computer. 

Now if you have a PC running Windows, you don’t have a choice.  Running a PC without protection is like sleeping next to the Amazon without mosquito netting.  You’re just asking for trouble. The last statistic I saw estimated that 10-15% of everything you download on the internet has PC malware in it.  Did you get that?  That’s over 1 in 10 downloads can potentially harm your PC!  

But not your Mac. 

So should you be panicking now that there is now one piece of Mac malware out there that can trick a gullible person into giving up their credit card data to a website?  Aware, yes.  Panicking, no.  

So what is malware, anyway? 

Malware is any piece of “malicious software” written for the sole purpose of bringing something bad into your computer, and by association, your life.  Malware can be a virus, a worm, a phish, a trojan, spyware, adware, tupperware and a lot of things you’d probably like to avoid.  

But that’s why we love Macs, right? 

Marginally relevant sidebar story: 

A dear friend was having us do some work on her MacBook Pro and had come to pick it up.  I was showing her what we’d done and talking about it as simply as possible so she’d know what we’d repaired along with some minor changes to her system.  After I’d been talking about a minute or two, she stopped me and said, “Oh my gosh!  I just did that thing!” 

“What thing?,” I replied 

“That thing where someone is talking technical and I just tune it out and wait for it to be over so I can smile and nod my head?” 

“Oh, that bad?” 

“No, just a force of habit.  I actually understand most of what you say, most of the time.  Would you mind repeating that part again about how I can change my password?” 

My point here (in case you’re glazed over and smiling blankly now) is that at this stage in MacLand, you don’t need anti-virus software.  

There really are no viruses for Macs anyway.  The only people telling you, you need them, are usually the same companies that make their living selling anti-virus software for the PC.  All too often the latest "study" that seems to indicate the need for this software on the Mac is usually funded by the same companies that would like to sell you the software.  Hmm... 

MAC Defender was a trojan (as in Troy, not birth control or USC) which required user intervention to get what they ultimately wanted: credit card data.  As such, it was also a “phish,” trying to hook you into giving up information it could not find or gather on it’s own.  Trojan’s make up about 70% of the malware on the internet these days.  Viruses only about 17%.  Malware creators used to be motivated simply by their devotion to the dark lord and bad food.  Just doing evil for evil’s sake was enough to delight their twisted, Twinkie sucking souls.  Now they’re all about profit.  

Your bottom line should be this:  Never give information of any kind to a website or email that you don’t know or trust.  You might also want to have a fake birth date that you use to register for certain legitimate things and a different credit card and/or email address for internet shopping.  Less is more on the internet. 

As far as Macs one day needing some type of anti-malware protection other than the Mac OS, it’s possible.  My best estimate at the rate things are going is that Apple is eventually going to be the number one platform for home users in the U.S. and possibly the world.  So it will be a bigger target for thieves and evil doers, who generally like to go where the money is.  

But we’re not there yet.  

Anti-virus software on the Mac right now is like driving your car with a helmet on.  Is it safer?  Probably.  Is it necessary if you’re already a safe driver and wear seat belts?  Probably not.  

Keep your data backed up with Time Machine and go about your business knowing that the internet is still pretty safe for Macs.  

Here’s Apple’s note on how to uninstall MAC Defender: 

http://www.micksmacs.com/article-redirect.htm 

We’re always here to help if you need us. 

Hope your Memorial Day Weekend is full of friends and family and not too much traffic.  Our hearts and gratitude go out to all of the men and women who have selflessly served this country. 

All the best, 

Mick 

6 Reasons Your Email Address May Be A Problem

Every time we work with a new client, one of the issues that usually comes up is their email address. Especially if they only have one.  In Santa Barbara, the majority of our clients use Cox for their internet connection.  In the olden days of the 90’s (that's actually TWO decades ago now!), being given an email address from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) was a really cool thing.  In the early daze of screaming (loud, not fast) dial-up modems, having your email address hosted by AOL, CompuServe and many smaller outfits like Silcom here in town, was a natural thing. There were not many alternatives.  No Gmail or Mobile Me, and Yahoo and Hotmail were just beginning to show up.  Basically, unless you were pretty technically savvy and got your own domain, you just grabbed the email address that your ISP gave you and then proceeded to bug everyone in your life to get a computer and start sending email. 

Today, in spite of the over-representation of juveniles who roam its malls, the internet is more mature, significantly faster, and accessed in ways the early pioneers might never have imagined.  Astronauts and submarine captains have internet access and it has become ubiquitous and essential across newly created mobile devices, the latest of which is Apple's iPad. Soon, we'll have it wired into our cars, bicycles, clothing, toothbrushes and just about anywhere you can imagine.   

So what does that have to do with your ISP issued email address? 

Well, there are a lot of drawbacks to having your primary email address tied to your ISP.   

1) The first problem is that your ISP has you prisoner.  If a competitor comes to town, with a newer, cheaper, better internet package, you are stuck with that cox.net address they are going to charge you to keep.     

2) Even worse, in changing ISPs because of a move they’ll sometimes completely cancel and delete the email account without you being aware of it.  Suddenly you have no access to your email or an address you can be reached at! 

3) Your internet service provider really doesn't care that much about providing you an email address.  Now, don't take it personally.  There's no money in it and the support costs are painful.  If your ISP could sign a deal with Google to handle all email addresses they would.  Google deals with the near endless service and support requests by having no real humans that you can locate.  [Actually, that's only mostly true.  I did reach a support team in Ireland once, but it took me an hour of phoning in favors to find that, and I think I had to wait a day for a call back from a number that self-destructed 5 minutes after we hung up.]  Rumor is that they're an entirely self-perpetuating algorithm, but I'll save that for another time… 

4) ISP email addresses are usually the most problematic on mobile devices.  I cannot tell you how many Cox, Verizon and Comcast email addresses have failed to appear properly on people's iPhones or iPads.  ISPs have responded to this problem with…nothing.  Modern email addresses need an IMAP configuration to stay in sync across numerous devices.  If you're totally up to date on your email because you've been checking it on your phone or work computer throughout the day, do you really want to come home to your computer and see all of those messages UNread?  Modern times require modern formats and if you have more than one device checking email for you, you should have your email account set up as an IMAP account.  Gmail and MobileMe do this by default. 

5)  ISP's are predominantly PC based and rarely offer any real help for Mac users.  They try sometimes, but it's rather comical how often we have to undo everything their "support" person has had a Mac user do to their computer.   

6)  ISP's are not really service companies.  They're actually more like a utility company.  What do I mean by that?  Well, their main job is to provide a big, wide, fast pipeline to the internet.  They have this bipolar relationship with support.  They see the potential revenues, but are not really sure how committed they are to diving in deeper.  There's a tentative, ill conceived quality to their "solutions" that have you trolling about on their website or downloading some sort of (usually) lame virus software that's supposedly going to make your life better.   Please don't.   

Solutions? 

First of all, I’m not suggesting you dump your primary email address provided by your ISP.  You can keep that as long as you want.  I’m suggesting a gradual migration away from it as your primary address where personal or important email comes.  On the road to that solution is the creation of a new address that you can begin writing to people from.  Actually, we suggest you create two new addresses.   Gmail is free, so it’s not a big deal.  One of these addresses is for family and friends and the other is for business and internet shopping contacts. In doing so, you protect your more personal address from all the SPAM that submitting it publicly can do. 

Not thrilled with Google controlling everything?  Then get an email address with your own domain.  [The domain is the part that comes after the "@" sign.]  Then you can have the same email address for life, regardless of who delivers the internet to you.  Something like, Sally@SallySmythe.com.  Families often get a domain and then dole out email addresses to each member.  Sally@TheSmytheFamily.com would be an example of that.  They're not expensive and you can usually get one for $15-$20/year. 

Whatever you decide is right for you and your family, just know that you have fewer options with your ISP providing your primary email address. 

We're always here to help. 

All the best, 

Mick

Ride a Pirated Pony...

Hard to think about beach balls in winter, but regardless of the temperature, we’ve all seen them at one time or another on our Macs.  We click something on our screen and the delightful, multicolored beach ball spins where the cursor once was.  Joy.  We then wait for an agonizing eternity (4.5 seconds) for it to stop spinning and do what we asked it to in the first place. If we start seeing beach balls a lot, it's a cause for concern for more than just our blood pressure.   

Spinning beach balls can mean your hard drive is overinflated and cannot find a place to store the latest life altering animal video your crazy Aunt in Indiana just emailed you.  Or it can mean that you haven't done any cleaning and maintenance on your computer since the day you bought it and, just like government, there is software in-fighting and corruption growing.  Or worst of all, it could mean something ominous like hardware failure.  Hard drives that are about to die, often get a lot of spinning pinwheels.  These should be regarded as an early warning sign as obvious as amorous teenagers who sneak away from the group in a scary movie.

Before going on… let's get one thing straight. 

Hard Drives and RAM are two completely different things.  They have totally different jobs.  If you confuse the two, you're in good company.  Most computer users throw out the words interchangeably with casual abandon.  My wife is always urging me to come up with simple analogies that make these terms easier to understand.   The best one I've been able to come up with so far is the car analogy.  

RAM is sort of like your car's engine.  Adding more RAM to your computer makes your Mac's engine stronger.  You can drive faster up hills, haul a trailer, or just get on the freeway more quickly. 

Hard Drives are for storage.  Imagine the cabin interior and trunk of your car as the total space you have to store stuff.  A Prius for example would have a small hard drive, while a VW Van could be said to have a large one.  At least that’s what a guy that used to live in his van once assured me.  You have cars out there with plenty of RAM and very small hard drives - think Porsche.  Overcompensation or not, the Porsche can drive very fast with little hesitation, but you can't carry much.  Try getting 4 people with luggage and egos into that. 

The opposite is true with cars that have large hard drives, with very little RAM. (I will not make a joke, I will not make a joke…)  Think of the VW Van from the 60's and 70's.  It has enough space for the Brady Bunch & Alice, as well as their luggage, but it will not likely top 40mph going up San Marcos Pass.

Ideally, we'd like a computer to have plenty of both RAM and hard drive space.  Plenty of RAM means fewer spinning wheels.  More programs can be in use at the same time without slowing down the Mac and seeing lots of beach balls.  It means a faster, more responsive Apple computer even if you're just doing ordinary things like checking email or surfing the web.  Enough RAM means your hard drive will be less stressed and grouchy.

A larger hard drive (with 20% or more free space) will allow you to store longterm more photos, movies, music and documents.

The bottom line is that your Mac may be a lot faster  and more responsive than you think it can be.  Not only might it be capable of running the very latest operating system, but with more RAM and hard drive space, you might delay having to shop for a newer model for at least another year or two.

Remember:

RAM/Memory =  Engine/Speed
Hard Drive    =   Storage Space.

Brought to you by your friendly Apple Technology Coaches at Mick's Macs.

Bellyache, Rejuvenate, or Consumer Bait?

It's always tough to see the latest, gorgeous, far-too-skinny models hit the catwalk.

Whether it's the new iPhone, MacBook Air, iMac, or whatever you just saw at the AppleStore, it's hard to come back home and see your old, familiar Apple computer.  According to my wife, it's a bit like watching George Clooney on the big screen and then coming home to your husband asleep on the sofa with his mouth half open.  

Perhaps I’m oversharing…

If we were all living in a world where we could justify buying new Apple computers every other year, it would be one thing.  But most of us don’t live in that world.  Even if we did, most Mac users buy Apple computers not simply because they have the latest, sexy technology and design, but because they LAST.  And in addition, they’re usually upgradeable, can run the very latest software and remain as relevant as something younger and thinner with no joint pain.

Macs are the longest living computers, and we pay a premium not to be exposed to viruses, spyware, constant crashing, downtime, a general fear of the internet and the need to hire a nerd every other month to get them back up and running.  We’re willing to pay more to be smarmy on occasion, snicker at our PC laden friends and say, “Sorry, I don’t do Windows.”   [Studies show that Mac users, on the whole, tend to struggle with hubris more than typical PC users.]  

Other studies show that while Macs are more expensive than PCs to purchase, they require less time and money to maintain over the life of the computer.

So having said all of that, don't you still drool a bit when something new and thin comes out?  Of course you do.  I have no use whatsoever for a 3rd computer and still I covet the new MacBook Air.   So what do you do with your 3 year old MacBook Pro when it has slowed down and you feel like the new Macs are blowing past you in the fast lane?

You have 3 choices, really.

1)  You can put up with it and complain.

2)  You can upgrade and make it as fast as the latest Macs

3)  You can dump it and buy new.  [At this point, my wife has strongly advised me to leave the husband on the sofa analogy alone.]

There are arguments to be made for any of these 3 choices, but only 2 are going to leave you smiling.  And of those, one will leave a lot more money in your bank account at the end of the day.

Let's face it, if you've been hard on your Apple computer, bashed it around, taken it out for one too many nights on the town of smoking and drinking, had a spill that you've yet to confess even to your therapist, maybe buying new is the way to go.  But if you've given your computer a modicum of care and respect, spending $300-400 to rejuvenate it might make a lot more sense than spending $1500-$3500 for an entirely new relationship.  

While there is a new generation of processors out there, typical users will not really be able to notice the difference.  Bringing new life to your current model with more RAM, Snow Leopard (10.6), and a faster, bigger hard drive will leave you smiling.  Most of our clients who have had these upgrades are genuinely shocked at how fast their computer becomes after our tweaks and tunings.

So think about it.

Bellyache, Rejuvenate, or Consumer Bait? 

Whatever you decide, we're here to help.

All the best,

Mick

P.S.  We sell used computers from time to time too.  Please call or email us if you're in the market for one or need to appraise yours.

Happy New Years From Mick's Macs!

Happy New Year to all of our Apple Clients!

Thank you for being a part of our lives.  We hope to continue being a part of yours for years to come.  As we raise our glasses of champagne tonight we will be full of more than just bubbles and good cheer.  We will be full with gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives, especially you.

From the entire team at Mick’s Macs, you have our deepest appreciation.

Thank you.

Happy New Years From Mick's Macs!

Happy New Year to all of our Apple Clients!

Thank you for being a part of our lives.  We hope to continue being a part of yours for years to come.  As we raise our glasses of champagne tonight we will be full of more than just bubbles and good cheer.  We will be full with gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives, especially you.

From the entire team at Mick’s Macs, you have our deepest appreciation.

Thank you.