The Tao of Steve

There are exactly 7 remotely stationed Australian aborigines that don't know what Steve Jobs said last week.  They are the only people that would probably enjoy the newsletter I had finished 2 days prior to his surprise announcement.  The piece I’d written was Pulitzer quality, philosophical prose that waxed poetic about:  “What is left for Steve Jobs at Apple?”  There were clever comparisons to Steve McQueen, my other favorite, cool Steve, which is where the title came from. That was the only thing I was able to salvage.  It also raised concerns about his health and the ultimate query as to what mountain was really left for him to climb?  Steve has done things that no one else in the tech OR business world has ever done and now Apple is playing tag with Exxon for the largest publicly traded company in the world.  What was left for S.J?   And then he told us he was quitting. Now, 7.9 million bloggers and news commentators are typing endlessly about the-legacy-of Steve-Jobs-and-what-Apple-will-be-like-without-him.  Will Tim Cook be able to fill his black turtleneck?  What does it mean that Steve will stay on as Chairman of the Board?  Will he be calling the shots while un-showered, still in PJs in front of cartoons and a bowl of Count Chocula?  How does Apple function without the iconic Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field?  Isn’t he the mad scientist with the Time Machine who regularly dashes to the future to find out what we're all using and then comes back and builds it?  What is Apple without the genius of Jobs?  And more importantly, do I know the answers to these questions?   Of course not.  I'm just a guy in the trenches who sees people struggle every day to keep their "perfect" Apple systems up and running.  We get to work with lovely, albeit frustrated people who don't understand why their free printer won't work.  But will that stop me from trying to appear knowledgeable, wise and visionary as I comment about the future of Apple without Esteban? Of course not. So here's what I think. Apple's going to be just fine.  It's definitely the beginning of the end of an era, but Apple’s going to be okay, at least for a few more years.  Supposedly there is a 5 year plan in play and all people have to do is learn their lines and the magic honey will continue to flow from the kingdom.  But it also seems unlikely to me that Steve will just instantly let go of the less visible reigns and not be in on most major decisions coming out of Apple for the next few years.  He quite likely will have a lot of power as Chairman of the Board.  However, I think his health issues have compelled him to pull back and examine his mortality again.  His pancreatic cancer was supposed to be a death sentence and he miraculously survived that.  And then there was the secret liver transplant a few years back.  He's definitely a survivor against the odds, but my take on Steve Jobs is that he's also a philosopher.  He's keenly aware of his own mortality and how, and with whom, he wants to spend whatever time he has left on the planet. I'm guessing his 4 kids and wife are probably at the top of that bucket list.  I know they would be on mine.  [My family, not his.]  Hopefully publishing his authorized biography is also on there.  That may finally give us a clue as to what being Steve Jobs is really like, or at least how he’d like to be remembered. Additionally, I'm hoping he'll write and speak more about what he likes and dislikes about technology and how we mere mortals should be interacting with it.  He's always been the number one champion of forcing technology to adapt to humans, not the other way around. If Microsoft robots were to try and take over the world (assuming they wouldn’t collapse from the weight of viruses before taking their first step), I’d want Steve Jobs around to tell us how to fight them.  People listen to Steve Jobs, even people who pretend not to.  In spite of the fact that I’ve spent a few decades tossing back more purple Kool-Aid than I can comfortably talk about outside of meetings, I don’t agree with everything he says.  I’m not a big fan of the burrowing of iOS into the MacOS and Lion is still a messOS in my opinion.  BUT, he’s been right about a LOT of things like: •   Cell phones, especially “smart” ones, were really sucky before the iPhone arrived. •   Cable companies and cellular service providers are still pretty sucky too.  •   Computers were super ugly and deserved to be hidden below desks before the first iMac came out and altered the way things could look. •   Desktop computers are looking more and more like trucks on our highways, with 90% of us driving cars that look like laptops, iPads, and iPhones. •   Flash & Blu-Ray really do suck* and the internet and our computers would be a better place without them.  *[Note:  My editor, my esteemed wife, has made me aware that I’ve overused this word and that it’s rather juvenile.  Try as I may, I cannot find a more adult adjective that appropriately describes the suckiness of both of these technologies. She remains disappointed and continues to hurl the thesaurus at me.]       •   Digital access to movies and music is a done deal.  Either come up with a reasonable price to sell them digitally, or the majority of the people you want to buy them, will download them for free. •   You really have to build backup software into the OS if you want people to back up.  More than half of the people still won't use it.  100% of those will still say they "intend to." The Tao of Steve.  What will Apple do without it?  No one truly knows, not even Steve. In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the impatience of Jobs. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.  We’re here when you need us, Mick

iPhone Auto-INcorrections

I hate the iPhone auto-correct.­

When the very first iPhone appeared on the planet, it was the coolest thing.  Apple told us all to ignore the tiny toy keyboard, tap our gargantuan digits with wild abandon and auto-correct would handle the rest.  And as uncomfortable as it seemed, they were right.  It really did work pretty well.  It put periods at the end of sentences, fixed contractions without having to find the dang apostrophe, and would even memorize a few pet words that were not in the dictionary, like schnookums.  Before I knew it, I was having my first positive experience with texting.  I’d never gleefully text messaged before the iPhone.  Now I was annoying a voting majority of my friends with texts, most of whom had no texting plan with their cell phones. 

I'd get calls like this one:

"Mick, please stop texting me!  Costs me 10¢ every time you do."

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize our friendship had such a low price tag."

"No, it's not about the money, it's just annoying."

"Our friendship is annoying?"

"No, just the texting, wise guy."

"Well, why don't you get an iPhone?"

"Don't they cost something like $600?"  This was approximately what you had to be willing to plunk down in 2007 to join the Church of iPhone.

"You get what you pay for," I preached.

"I'm not ready to pay $600 for a cell phone that my 2 year old will probably drop in the toilet."  He had a point.

"But it's so much more than that," I evangelized.

"More than $600?"

"No, more than a phone!  It's like having a tiny computer and Internet device anywhere you go."

"Isn't that what a laptop is for?"

[Sigh]  It's hard being ahead of your time.  This friend bought one shortly after Apple lowered the price and then went ahead to tell the world how revolutionary iPhones are by text messaging all of his friends without texting plans...

So I was texting my wife the other day and it went something like this:

 "Hi Live, running a little Kate."

"Live? Kate?

"Sorry, "Love Kate."

"Who's Kate?"

"I mean ‘Love’ and ‘late.’  Argggg!  Dang auto-correct!”

“Oh, got it.  Just wanted Tunisia,” she replied.  

“Tunisia?”

“To ‘tease ya.’  LOL!”

Now at this point I would love to share some of the truly sidesplitting auto-corrections many iPhone users have experienced and uploaded on the web, but this is a family show here.  If you want more, check out:  

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

In the meantime, what to do about this often-embarrassing annoyance?  How do we continue to text without shame?  What are the algorithms that somehow place "Kate" as a more common word than "late?"  Is my iPhone obessed the latest royal nuptials?  Are cuts to public education affecting autocorrect? And what about all of those strange misspelled words that get memorized too?  I once had “Willybangome” slide past the iPhone sensors when I was trying to type “What time will you be home?”  I could never type the word "what" again without seeing that creative correction. 

Well, if worst comes to worst (as it did above for me), you can always go into the iPhone settings and reset the keyboard dictionary.  You wipe all things memorized by going here:  Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary.

But then you must be willing to live without Willybangomes.  We found that we couldn’t, and now use it to inquire when the other is coming home.

Such us life.

Such is live.

Such us Luge…!....

Argggg…. Such. is. life.

Gotta live that iPhone.

We're here if you need us.  But please don’t text.  Seriously.  Our main line doesn’t receive them.

All the beast,

Nick

www.MicksMacs.com

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.

Top 12 Signs Your Mac Needs Maintenance

"Maint Req" flashed on my car's dashboard last week.

It annoyed me because the first moment I saw it, I worried something major was wrong.  Then, my own internal light went on. 

"Ah!  It's just a reminder to change my oil.  Bah!  No rush there," he said with ominous procrastination and a surprising use of the word, ‘bah.’ 

That’s when it dawned on me what computers might be like with dashboard warning lights we could also choose to ignore.

So, in the interest of selfless, public service, our crack team here at Mick’s Macs has come up with:

    The top 12 early warning signs that maintenance is required on your Mac

12)  It's just not as zippy as it used to be in spite of the fact that your Canadian Pharmaceutical spam is as robust as ever.

11)  It won't turn on.

10)  You're seeing colorful spinning beach balls with regularity but you're nowhere near a large body of water or anyone named “Moondoggie.”

9)   You quit smoking decades ago and your Mac suddenly begins.

8)  It won't turn off.  Like an inebriated family member during the holidays, it just doesn't know when to quit.

7)  You recently dropped it.

6)  You're getting warning messages that seem awfully dire, but you ignore them because you don't know what they mean.

5)  Crazy lines are appearing on the screen and only a few of them are related to your 2 year old's breathtaking, "Early Explorations with Black Sharpie."

4)  It shuts down suddenly without permission.

3)  You have a young child or animal that recently walked across your keyboard and now all of the menus are in Hindi.

2)  Even in the cold of winter (otherwise known as ‘November’ in Santa Barbara), you don't use a heater because your Mac heats the room comfortably enough.

1)  And finally, you're seriously considering sending your new MacBook Air --- through the air.

Many of our clients are savvy folk.  They understand that Apple computers, like cars, need an oil change, lube job and tune-up once in awhile.  Consider it similar to your annual physical… you don't really want to go, nothing seems terribly wrong, but it’s good to check that all systems are working and finally find out what that rash is all about.

Clients who take care of their computers like their cars usually call us every 6 – 9 months saying: "Hi Mick. Nothing's horribly wrong.  It's just been a while and my iMac seems like it's getting slower.  Maybe it just needs a tune-up."    We usually have them drop it off at our shop where we'll clean it up (the physical computer as well as the data), run diagnostics on it, repair ("de-gunk") or upgrade the OS, check the hard drive, make sure there is enough RAM in there for optimal speed and basically give it a complete once over to make sure all is well.  We can make sure they're backing up, practicing good data storage (i.e. everything important to them is not sitting on their desktop), and even have a chat about how they're using their Mac these days, what's working for them, and what's not.  

Let us know when you’d like us to give your Mac a routine check-up or when you see any of the above "Maintenance Required" signs.  Word is that sanity levels tend to improve dramatically after a visit to the MacDoctor.

Happy Holidays!

Mick

P.S.  I learned how to turn off the warning light on my Toyota Highlander.  I'm sure it's nothing serious…

Off and On

People say I'm annoying. 

I'm coming to grips with that.  

I'm like the therapist you never invite to dinner because you're sure you'll be chatting away with a big piece of neurosis stuck in your teeth.  It's a lonely life, being a sometimes prophet of doom.  I don't get invited to parties as much as I used to.  And the hard part is I can't tell if it's because I'm annoying, or just amazingly boring when it comes to encouraging citizens to back up their computers.  Probably both.

I know there is resistance here. 

To some people it sounds like they're getting pitched by a fast talking used car salesman when I ask, "What is your backup plan?"  To others, its like saying, "So, how is your diet coming?”  Or, my personal favorite,  “Finish that novel yet?"    Guilt and shame, like dysfunctional familiar family members, rush in to crush any chance we’ll feel more motivated to actually do something about it.  For many people backup plans are an onerous "should" in their lives that they'll get around to “some day.”  Kind of like estate planning.  The latter was on our list of things to do for 4 years before my wife and I finally took care of it last year with a great local lawyer. 

And just like Estate Planning lawyers, we try to prepare people for death in our line of work too.  [My editor says I have to work on my segues, so….]  And the number one thing we see die in computers, is the hard drive.  There is virtually no rhyme or reason why they go.  They can be brand new, with that new drive smell, right out of the box and just die the minute you take them for a spin.  Or they can be 15 years old with dust bunnies and corrosion, screaming like a Dodge with a bad fan belt, hot enough to cook breakfast on, still doing their job.  In spite of that, in terms of hard drive death, it's not 'if,' but 'when.'  It continues to be very immature technology and much more delicate than the average user thinks.  

The vast majority of hard drives in use today have metal platters than spin very fast with a tiny head that flies micrometers above the surface sucking (reading) or spitting out (writing) magnetic bits of data, billions of zeroes and ones.  [...Now if I can only wake my wife from the coma that last sentence just put her in...]  It’s like we have this boozy, circus clown inside our computer spinning plates on a stick.  And we all know that eventually, those plates (as well as the clown) will fall.

So what do we do?

Steel yourself, I'm going annoying again--->  We back up.  

Okay.  I get that you get that.  But how much back up is enough?

Since the dawn of home computing in the mid 80s TechSperts have always said you should have at least 2 backup copies of everything you cannot afford to lose.  That used to be a punishing practice.  Not anymore for Mac users with TimeMachine software and external hard drives. I think we all can agree that backing up is now easier, more automated, carefree and reliable than ever before.   Your in-home or in-office backup drive should be your first line of defense.  So is that enough? 

To quote Mr. Eastwood, the question should be:  How lucky do you feel?

In-home backups were certainly not enough for the victims of the last 3 major fires that roared across our mountains.  Some of those people lost everything, including their computers and backup hard drives.  All documents, pictures, movies, and music gone.  But even if you’re not in a fire zone, and as reliable as TimeMachine is for most people, there are still some who forget to plug in the drive or notice that it hasn’t backed up for a long time.

Oops.

So what should you do to prevent this from happening?  Glad you asked. :-)

You need an OFF-site backup plan.  There are a couple ways to accomplish this and the first is dramatically more tedious than the second. 

The old way we used to deal with this problem was to buy a second hard drive, make a second copy of all our data about once a week, and then cart that drive to a different location than your computer.  If you don't mind all the manual copying you have to do and remembering to bring the drive with you when you leave the home or office, this old school approach might work for you.  It was our only option until recently.

But there's a better, easier way:  Online (internet based) back up plans.  Off-Site and Online.

You never have to leave your home or office.  They work wherever you have an Internet connection so they’re great for travel too.  Online back up is only going to get bigger, better and faster and may one day (if you trust it) replace your onsite backup plans.  But not yet. 

Why not?

For starters, it’s much too slow.  It usually takes a few weeks to get all of your data backed up to the cloud and depending on what you need to restore, it can take nearly as long to do so.  It also doesn’t backup everything.  You can’t restore your OS, or applications, and sometimes email is particularly hard to restore because of the way it's buried in your system folder.  TimeMachine doesn’t have that problem and can restore everything in an hour or two.  Also, online backups are usually only kept for about 30 days.  Did you just realize today you deleted a file 3 months ago?  It will not be on your online backup. 

Here at Mick's Macs, a couple of techs and I tested 5 or 6 of the major services available about a year ago and didn't find any of them really satisfactory.  We tested [the appropriately named] Mozy, [the explosively named] Carbonite, [the ominously titled] CrashPlan, [the bizarrely named] JumpDisk from Amazon, Mobile Me [Apple is still mysteriously absent from this space] and DropBox.  Mobile Me and DropBox are not really backup services, but rather sync services with online storage options and no automated software to do this in the background.  The one we ultimately picked as our favorite was not even on the radar at that time.   

Without going into boring technical detail here, all of these plans we tested put a lot of stress on the computers.  Our MacBook Pros' CPUs (engines) would race on high for hours as they tried to push this data up onto the Internet.  The computer fans kicked on and our temperature gauges (compliments of iStat menus) showed raised temperatures we were uncomfortable with.  They made the computer miserably slow, were hard to quit out of, and sometimes crashed our laptops.  It was a surprisingly adversarial relationship to say the least.  We felt all of these issues would unnecessarily shorten the life of our computers and our sometimes tenuous grasp of inner calm. The bottom line was none of them really won us over.  Great concept, definitely the wave of the future, but nothing really ready for prime time.

Then we discovered BackBlaze .  

I kept seeing people rave about it in various tech forums so I wrote to the founders to check it out.  $5/month for unlimited data backup.  Seriously, unlimited.  If you pay for a year, it's $50, or a little over $4/month.  We have tested 3 different MacBook Pros running on it since last Spring or so.  

Here's what I like about them.

You hardly know BackBlaze is there.  The web interface (on the rare occasion when you need to use it) is amazingly simple and clean.  It's easy to sign up, easy to adjust your upload backup speeds with a throttle, and the control panel it installs is very unobtrusive.   Similar to the web interface, the control panel is also clean, easy to understand and use.  Very Mac-like.   But the best thing about it is that it does NOT take over your computer and throttle the CPU like most of the other programs we tested earlier in the year.  

There is a free trial and we've started referring our clients to it using the link below:

http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af0717

If you try them out, please write to me to tell us about your experience.  The greater the pool of experiences, the more we can judge how they do with different users and machines.

And if you're really, really happy, consider inviting your computer therapist over for dinner once in awhile?  Remember, it’s only your true friends who will tell you when you’ve got something stuck in your teeth.

All the best,

Mick

The Hot Apply Fry

Well, we got what we asked for.  

All those complaints about how “cold” the weather was this summer, how overcast and damp, finally paid off.  I think Monday was one of the hottest days I can recall in over 30 years of living in our fair town.

2 weeks prior, my wife had given up on any notion of Summer (Indian or otherwise), and had the Gas Company come out to check and light the furnace.  In doing so, they discovered our 52 year old classic was beyond repair.  So on Monday, like buying a snow plow in June, I was calling heating companies to replace our furnace.  A couple places laughed at me.  They thought it was a prank.  

This week we’ve also had a lot of calls about Macs performing oddly.  Folks have described sluggish behaviors, lines on the screen, graphic distortions, freezing, crashing, and generally misbehaving.  Not to dismiss the richness of possibility for other problems, but we’re finding a lot of these issues are related to the heat.  Computers, like penguins, don’t like getting too hot.  That’s why they have so many fans, vents and cooling systems built in.  Laptops are more susceptible than desktops because of the tightly packed components in a small space.

So how do you avoid baking your Apple?

First, find out how hot things are.  Go to our website and download the application called iStat Menus.  Install it (turn off the auto update features) and check the readings.  We’re in the process of creating a better looking page just for downloads, but for now, you’ll find it on the left hand column on our site-map page here:

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

Once that's installed, you can get an accurate sense of how hot your computer is.  Each Apple computer will have a slightly different range, but generally speaking, when you see temps rising beyond 160F, you’ll be hearing fans and feeling some performance drag.

So what to do?  Here are 7 ways to "play it cool, boy."

1)  If the room is really, really hot and you’re not using your computer, shut it down, give it a break, give yourself a break.  Pour yourself, not the computer, a cold one.

2)  Find a cooler place to compute.  Canada is nice.

3)  If you have a notebook computer (they used to be called “laptops”) consider using it on a desk and not in your lap where the exhaust vents can get blocked.  With the advent of faster processors comes greater heat.  As with most legally savvy corporations, Apple decided changing the name to “notebook” computer was enough to avoid the scalded thigh lawsuits.  In the winter, however, laptops can be quite cozy on cold nights.

4)  Consider getting a laptop cooler.  No, they’re not ice chests, but rather platforms with cooling fans built in.

5)  If you can’t take a break and the room is a few degrees shy of Hades, RESTART the computer.  Often programs get stuck and, like an engine racing in the driveway, they will overheat the processor.  

6)  Stream video at night.  You can see video at night better anyway.  And if there is a choice, stream video that is not Flash based.  Flash is a huge processor hog that can heat up your computer.  Steve Jobs doesn’t like Flash and keeps wishing it would go away.  However, it’s a big part of video on the web these days, so you’ll likely need to use it to watch YouTube animal videos.

7)  Get more RAM, even if you’re a Sagittarius.  RAM has no moving parts and when you have enough it takes the stress off your hard drive and other parts that generate heat.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a heating system to purchase.  

Stay cool!

Mick

P.S.  TiVo upgrades are hot!  We do ‘em!  Call us about putting a larger HD (for storing more shows) in your TiVo! 

Computers Are Dumb

Computers are dumb.

Perhaps that sounds odd coming from a guy who spends all day working with them, but it's true.  We are still in the infancy of the digital revolution.  Even the very latest gadget from Apple Inc. will look like a Model T or Steam Locomotive compared to what we'll be working with in 30-50 years.  The automobile (at least a steam version) is older than this country.  It has well over 2 centuries of technology behind it.  That is (in part) why our cars last longer than our computers.  Many historians tie the birth of the computer to the Manhattan Project in 1945, but the first computer most of us actually got our hands on didn't arrive until January, 1984.  That was the birth of the Macintosh, the moment everything changed.

That was only a little over 25 years ago.

As fast as we believe technology evolves, 25 - 50 years is still not very long in the development of a sophisticated machine.  

Okay, so maybe computers are not so much "dumb" as immature.  A 25 year old machine is a lot like a precocious 6-year old kid.  Not a baby anymore, but definitely not old enough to do much on it's own.  We have to tell it to do everything.  Oh, sure, we can set up automated systems to remind it to get the mail, empty the trash, take messages and even go to sleep on time.  But as soon as we try to work with it on more sophisticated tasks, a computer needs us to know a lot more than it.  It's like having a car mechanic with the ability to completely rebuild your engine, but only if you tell them exactly how, and in what sequence, to do so.  How frustrating would that be?!

And it leads unnecessarily to technophobia.

We see it every day in what we do.  I cannot tell you how many of our clients feel they need to denigrate themselves before they can ask for help.   "I'm a total idiot when it comes to this computer."    We hear this all the time...

Don't be afraid.  We're here to help.  

We're building visual tutorials on our website that you can check out any time for help with some common tasks.  We're also trying to be even more responsive with instant remote desktop counseling sessions. These are live tutorials or fix-it sessions where we (upon request only) tunnel through the internet to see your computer's desktop and talk to you through your Mac.  If you've never done this kind of screen sharing before, you're in for a treat.  It's pretty cool.  And it's a fast and easy way to help you figure out how to tell your dumb computer what you need it to do.

Remember. It's not you. It's the computer.  :-)

Happy Weekend!

Mick

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