Father's Day Gift Certificate

Happy Father's Day from everyone here at Mick's Macs!

Print out this syncing package gift certificate for your father or husband this Father's Day weekend.
This is the perfect companion gift to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Click the image below and it will open in another window allowing you to print it:

They Say that Backing up is Hard to do?...

Sometimes, being your Apple Technology Coach, I feel like an exhausted doctor who knows he is speaking to people in deep denial about their health. They want a pill and the secret is boringly difficult:

Eat Right, Exercise, and Don’t Smoke.

I know.... You’ve already tuned out. I did too.

Here’s my secret to being able to sleep at night:

Back up, Know the early warning signs, and Call at the first sign of trouble.

You just tuned out. Admit it. I used to too.

But here’s where the analogy breaks down. 5,10, 15+ years ago, backing up a computer was a huge, time consuming, expensive, frustrating headache. You needed dozens of floppy, zip, CD, or DVD discs that took a generation to burn. Or you had an external hard drive that cost more than your car and you could never remember what you backed up on it. Or how you were supposed to back up on it.

“I dragged the Hard Drive onto it. Isn’t that enough?”

If not the manual approach, you had to use a program so complicated and anti-intuitive that even though you backed up every month, you could never remember what you knew at the end of the 2 hours it took you to remember how to use the program last month. Arghhh! It was time consuming, expensive, hard to do right, and basically an experience only slightly more enjoyable than an argument with your spouse.

It’s not like that anymore.

It’s so goll darn easy that you really have no excuse. No argument.

Get a good, reasonably priced external hard drive or TimeCapsule from Mick’s Macs, plug it in, and let TimeMachine (available from System 10.5 on up) take it from there.

That’s it.

Really. That’s it.

It’s not like that diet you “should” go on. It’s not a New Year’s resolution to get in shape. You don’t even have to eat right for this to work. You can stay fat, keep smoking and never get off the sofa and this will still work. And on or off the sofa, you’ll sleep better knowing that it does.

So why don’t people do it?

One of our clients (a writer) who was having a bit of financial stress recently wrote to me after I convinced her to get a backup hard drive from us no matter what her financial situation was.

“Mick, I was resistant to spending any more money on a backup drive, but you made it so easy to pay in small installments. Even more than that, I never realized how peaceful it would make me feel to see it quietly backing up every hour as I put the finishing touches on my novel. Thanks for advocating for me and my writing.”

Okay, so you’re worried about a few extra bucks for a backup solution. Have you run the math on how much time and money you’ll lose if your hard drive dies?

I can't tell you how many people come into my shop when it's too late. It’s the worst part of my job. People come in with guilty, pained expressions on their faces usually saying something like, “Yeah, I know I should have a backup, but.... You can still get it all back, can’t you? Please?”

My mother's hard drive just died last week, while she was in the final throws of writing a book. She has a beautiful, well cared for 24" iMac that's only about a year and a half old. Thankfully, she had a TimeMachine back up, so restoring her data was as easy as replacing her internal hard drive (under AppleCare it was FREE) and putting her backed up novel back on to the new one. She thanked me profusely for insisting she set up such a system.

See, the thing is, it’s not hard to do anymore. It’s not expensive anymore. Having a computer without a reliable backup plan is not like the diet you were supposed to go on. It’s like driving your car without insurance. That’s illegal in most States. Hard drives die when they’re brand new, they die when they’re a month old, a year old, 3 years old and there is no pattern. There is no way to predict when it will happen. Hard drive death is a digital earthquake. There’s little or no warning, and you just have to be prepared. It’s not “if,” but “when.”

If you are seeing a lot of spinning beach balls (the multi-colored pin wheel that comes up when your computer is “thinking”), make sure you’re totally backed up and call us immediately. It might be nothing, or it might be a short lived late warning sign that it’s about to fail completely. If your mac is not starting up quickly, or the startup cog wheel turns and turns and turns, make sure you’re totally backed up and give us a call. If your computer feels slower, or sluggish, give us a call. All of these can be signs that you’re about to lose a hard drive.

So,... you ready?

Last time.

1. Back up
2. Watch for the warning signs
3. Call us at the first sign of trouble

Let us help you get peace of mind. Insure your most precious family photos, movies, documents, email, music, and more.

We have hard drives and TimeCapsules on sale right now. Call us, mention this blog and get a special deal.

Trust me. You're WORTH it!

All the best,

Mick

Apple's Mystery Announcement from the big "J"

The technological world is giddy with the latest data on Jobs. Big "J," mind ya. The employment picture is still under water, but there's not a cloud in the sky when it comes to another magical mystery event to be hosted by Steve Jobs.

Steve is Moses in this world, and we're all expecting him to come down from Cupertino mountain with a tablet or two in tow. At least that's what the rumors say.

The actual Apple press release says, "Come see our latest creation." And there are lots of paint splotches all over it.

Here it is:

If the rumors are correct, on Wednesday, Jan 27th, Stevo will be debuting Apple's tablet device. The iTablet, iSlate, iPad?... Everyone is guessing. [Many are also hoping it will not be called “the iPad.”] Either way, in typical secret agent style, Apple has not said a single word about what it will announce next week on hump day. For all we know it could be Apple’s attempt to reshape, define, and dominate the paintball game market....

But I’m still excited.

We’ve seen what Apple did for the all-in-one computer (the iMac), the digital music revolution (the iPod), and then finally a smart cell phone we don’t hate (the iPhone). So is now another defining moment? Will we all think back on this time decades later and tell wistful tales to drain the life force from our grandkids about exactly what we were doing when we first learned of the Apple tablet? Maybe. Regardless, most of us purple Kool-Aide connoisseurs are secretly hoping that Apple will create another digital device we'll wonder how we lived without.

We're all bipolar about it too.

We know without a doubt it's going to separate us from hard earned money and it will seem too expensive the moment it’s announced. Dell and Microsoft will blather on about how they can make one with a trackball for less than $39, but we'll just have to have the Apple one, right?

How did I ever keep up with email on the go before my iPhone? Now less than 90 seconds can pass before I’m able to see the latest 72 yard long forward of cute animal pictures from my Mom. I used to loathe text messages and having to thumb through 3 letters on each key to get the right one. And where is the freakin’ apostrophe again?! Now I pound out text messages like Mozart. My 2 thumbs blaze away on the iPhone's miniscule keyboard and somehow come up with most of the right letters in spite of each one of my digits easily covering half of it. Kids today don't even email anymore. They say it's dead. Soon even text messaging will be dead. No doubt replaced by tiny dancing 3D fairies from Avatar that deliver our desperately important communiques to each others' phones. Hey, as long as there’s fairy dust and an expensive gadget from Apple to buy, I’m in.

What did I ever do before I had iDevices?...

My crystal ball says Apple’s tablet device will be somewhat like a large iPhone, but much more than simply a larger screen. I predict it will attempt to save the newspaper and magazine industries (which are collapsing) by making reading on a digital device fun, while costing real dinero. I predict adults over 40 who are honest enough to admit they own a magnifying glass, will fall in love with the larger screen. I predict that by noon next Wednesday, Amazon’s Kindle will look like an 8 track tape deck. I predict Apple’s tablet will be easy and fun to watch movies and play games on. I predict that it will do video conferencing over wi-fi and possibly by Summer run on another cellular network other than the much adored AT & T. I predict that Microsoft has a crack team standing by to undertake a spectacularly bad attempt to copy it, will eventually decide to make theirs brown, and give it an inspirationally poor name like “Veen.”

If even half of the rumors are true, this device will control all living and inert objects in your home. The next time my dog starts barking at 2am, I touch a button on the iSlate and ZAP! A Valium mist is released from her collar and I can go back to the business of dreaming of Intuit’s demise. When I wake up with it next to my bed, I can command my coffee maker to brew, read the morning paper while I wait, and ask the garbage cans to move down to the curb.

Other rumors suggest that the finger gestures needed to control this device will require a 10-week Tai Chi class and piano lessons. Or what about the 3D graphics that will force us to wear funny glasses so we can see our “forgot your password?” prompts lift up into the air and shake a finger at us? Yeah, that’ll be cool.

College kids are starting to dream that a digital delivery of their text books (highlighting included) will save them more money for beer. That is, of course, after they convince Ma and Pa that they must have the device “for school.”

Will we also see the iLife and iWork suites updated to match the year we’re in? Will one or both suddenly be touch activated so we can use them on the new Apple Tablet? Is Stevo about to announce iPhone OS 4 as well?

Other than Steve and a handful of imprisoned Apple employees, who knows? For the rest of the world, unencumbered by non-disclosure contracts, we get to walk around at liberty, provide Apple with free advertising space in our mouths, and eventually find out the truth sometime between 10 and 11am, Cupertino Time, next Wednesday morning.

But honestly, isn’t this a little bit fun?

Stay Tuned...

Mick

http://www.MicksMacs.com