iCloud Info

        Here is a series of helpful articles on iCloud from the "Basics4Mac" newsletter sent to us from Jim Hamm.  He says, "I've set up iCloud and one use of it I'm impressed with is how it syncs to all your devices. For example, a friend notified me of a new email address while I was reading on my iPad. I changed my contacts list on my iPad and made a mental note that I've got to change the new email address on my two Macs and iPhone. This is easy to forget to do—for me, anyway. When I opened contacts on my MacBook Air to do just that, voila, it had already been changed! For anyone subscribing to MobileMe (I don't), this will be old news. But for me, this syncing process is very helpful.
        "Unfortunately, iCloud will only sync certain things—not everything on your Mac. Thus, say, if you've only got one Mac and use Time Machine to backup, then iCloud is probably of limited use to you," Jim concludes.

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iCloud Backup

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        Jim Hamm sends this helpful advice:  "Following is a posting (not mine) from a forum I subscribe to on using iCloud for backup. This may be helpful in determining what—and how much—of something you do want to backup to iCloud. Every app you have installed is listed and how much storage is used for that app. Storage can be turned on/off for each app."
        "For those of you who will be installing iOS and using iCloud tomorrow -something it took me quite awhile to learn - if you have an app with a lot of content (iBooks for example) make sure you turn it OFF in iCloud backup (iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > Backups / Devices / Selected Device >; Backup Options > iBooks/other App > Off). I sync a LOT of items to iBooks on both iPhone and iPad (1.9GB > 2.3GB) so I was filling up my 5GB of 'Free' space and was quite annoyed that backups were taking up space but once I realized what was taking up 4.2GB I turned iBooks off on both devices and my backups went down to 400MB & 500MB leaving me 4.1GB free for other storage."

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Possibly, an iPad Mini

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        "Sending this link from PadGadget, Jim Hamm asks, "Could this rumor be true? What do you think: a good move for Apple or not? Zee just received her new 'mini' Kindle, and is it ever small and light, but has the same screen size as a regular Kindle. It is a pleasure to hold and read books on it. It is unbelievably thin and light. She has 363 books stored on it! Digital downloads is a market that will grow, in my opinion, and I think it would be smart for Apple to participate more fully in it by offering a lower-cost iPad.
        "I'm relatively new to the digital download world, but I've taken a liking to it, and enjoy the ease of getting books from the library and reading them on my iPad. I just downloaded a new book from the library this morning, and didn't have to budge from my easy chair to search for and get the book. Nice. An iPad Mini with a lighter weight is an intriguing thought for me."

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Be Prepared!

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        Not just a Scout motto, but a good reminder to all of us, “Be Prepared.” Our main consideration today is be prepared by backing up what’s on your computer. Hopefully you’ve got an exterior drive that’s lit up, doing its job with Time Machine, as you’re writing on your computer. So what happens when the unexpected happens? What about an electric surge or malfunction of the transformer out there in the alley?
        Surge protector strips might help. How about an APC Back-UPS device? Or, better yet, a whole-house surge protector from APS?
        We experienced a problem just last week with the alley transformer. Four neighbors were also affected. Interesting what got fried and what didn’t. Good-bye to my dishwasher, microwave, fluorescent light in the laundry room, 3 radios, the doorbell, and a couple of surge protector strips. Thankfully, not hurt were the computers, printers, TV, and washer and dryer.
        SOS to some knowledgeable guys from PMUG. “Would an additional backup device that’s only plugged in once a day to use, then unplugged, be a good idea?” was my query.
        John Carter emailed, “For my iMac, I have a 500GB USB powered hard drive that is solely dedicated to being a fairly recent clone of my internal hard drive, and once I update the clone, it is put away in the closet. I only update it once every few months. I also have Time Machine backing up to a 1TB hard drive. If I should lose my internal drive — or the entire computer — I can boot up off the clone and restore from the Time Machine. I also have another 500GB USB powered hard drive that I back up my personal files to. This one gets updated fairly often and then is unplugged and put aside. Now, I have two machines, an iMac and a MacBook Pro, and they are pretty much a clone of each other. The MacBook Pro has its own Time Machine hard drive. So if one goes down, the other is brought up to date from the backup of the down machine and I’m no worse for wear. And since both machines have the same operating system and complete set of applications, I only need one bootable clone for both machines.
        "Industry standard backup methods is to have one set of full backups onsite and another duplicate set of backups offsite. The onsite backups are incremental every day and the offsite backups are full backups once a week. The weekly backups are rotated every four weeks so that only four devices are needed for the weekly backups. One device is used for the daily incremental backups. These daily backups are accumulated on that one device until the end of the week when it becomes the full weekly backup. A duplicate is made of it and sent offsite. Every fourth week one of the weekly backups comes back from offsite and becomes the next daily incremental backup device. Once a year, or as often as the company’s policy dictates, the backup devices are replaced with new ones.”
        John summarized, “You can never have too many backups. Choose what is critical to you and be very paranoid about it.”
        Jim Hamm wrote, “I recently purchased a small external drive from Amazon, a Buffalo Technology MiniStation Stealth 500 GB USB 2.0 portable external Hard Drive HD-PCT500U2/B (black). It is very small, quiet and only $50. I’m quite pleased with it and would buy another one.”
        David Passell went into detail, “I bought two My 500GB Passports about two (or three) weeks ago from Best Buy. One was specifically for Mac, the other for PC. I set up/partitioned my Passport for Mac as a clone for the Mac HD;  I purchased the fully featured SuperDuper. The internal Mac HD was 120GB and was getting limited in free space. I created a sandbox, in a much smaller partition, on the passport from which I always start. I also have some items I save on a partition that is just "passport.” It works very well. if I disconnect it (while the Mac is off), the Mac will restart from its internal HD. When starting/restarting, hold down the OPTion key and select the drive or sandbox to start from. The System Preferences startup disk does not work.
        "As for the PC Passport, I connected it to a Windows 7 Dell. it backed up the machine two ways. (1) I used the 'smart' software that came with the Passport and found it only backed up Data. I used the backup software that is part of Windows and it backed up (I think) the whole computer. I am really not very familiar with Windows and have difficulty telling where anything is, or what is running.
        "As for writing to the PC Passport if I plug it into the Mac: I obtained Mac Fuse and NFTS 3G. That combination of 'other' system preferences allows transparent writing to the disk. Before installing those, I could only read from an NFTS-formatted drive. Formatting a drive to NTFS is another matter. It appears more involved. Several forums simply say find somebody with a Windows machine.
        "I bought a Seagate Free Agent several weeks ago. It had a lot of movie promotional material on it; one movie I could watch free, and about 150GB of movies I would have to 'subscribe' to. It seemed clunky and I returned it.
        "I purchased a WD My Book 3TB drive hoping to replace the 500GB that I have been using since 2008 for Time Machine. It was PC formatted but I repartitioned it for Mac OS extended Journaled it to use for Time Machine and other things. It was totally unsuitable. It would not automatically mount on Mac turnon. I reformatted it (on a PC) to NTFS, restored the software that was on it, and returned it for credit."
        David’s recommendation: “As far as power surges are concerned, I strongly recommend putting a UPS (I've been using an APC for years) between your equipment and your power lines. I also installed a power surge protector right inside the main breaker box (keep one hand behind your back and wear rubber soled sneakers when you do this :).  I also have a UPS between the power line and my VCRs and DVD recorder. That way recordings and timer settings are seldom lost except for very extended outages.   
        Jim wrote again to emphasize, “The most important thing about backing up is to do it. Another aspect that's important—and which I just recently did—is to have a bootable backup clone. A couple of programs to do this, and which are mentioned often in blogs, are Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner.”
        Don got us started now, buying two APC Battery Backup units that each handle 6 outlets. But, that’s just the start, so the project continues . . .
        Review the basics: A 5 minute video about Time Machine http://www.cultofmac.com/82299/how-to-easily-back-up-your-mac-with-time-machine-video-how-to/
        A helpful article from Macworld on what and how to backup. http://www.macworld.com/article/156601/2011/01/what_how_backup.html
        So, what do you think, and how can YOU be prepared? Are you backing up? Are your backups secure?
        See you at Saturday's PMUG meeting!

iPhone 4S and Miscellaneous Observations

        "If you've got the time and inclination to read a somewhat lengthy article, here are observations on iPhone 4S," states Jim Hamm.  He goes on to comment that it's by John Gruber, "a well-known blogger whose perspicacity I admire."  
        (If you find the white-on-black format hard to read do these keys at the same time: control, option, command and 8.  Do the same then to toggle back.)

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New Features of iOS5 and iCloud

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"Here is a summary of the new features in iOS 5 and iCloud available starting tomorrow, Oct 12, as reported in the 'Cult of Mac' newsletter," reports Jim Hamm.  He goes on to quote from it, "Want to know what Apple retail employees can tell you about iOS 5 and iCloud? These images are of leaked internal Apple documents which are provided to retail store employees to help them sell iOS 5 and iCloud.
     "The documents were obtained by 9to5Mac, and describe all of the major new features in iOS 5, such as Notification Center, iMessage, and Twitter integration; in addition to the key features of iCloud, such as Photo Stream, iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match, and Documents in the Cloud."

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Steve Jobs 1955-2011

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        We were all shocked to hear of the death of Steve Jobs. Opening to Google's homepage this morning under the search box is the simple notation: Steve Jobs 1955-2011.  Clicking on the name takes us to the Apple website where a photo of Steve is posted.
         Jim Hamm writes, Many articles are appearing about the passing of Steve Jobs. Several of them are listed on the website 'All Things D.'  Here is one by Walt Mossberg, tech writer for the Wall Street Journal, and his remembrances of Steve.
        Jim reminisces, "Zee and I were at the MacWorld Expo (San Francisco) in February, 2008, where Steve introduced the MacBook Air. I, of course, rushed home and ordered one. We didn't make it into the conference room where Steve gave the presentation, and didn't see his presentation in person, but we got to see it on a screen in the expo hall. With Steve's flair for a dramatic presentation, I'll never forget him pulling the MacBook Air out of a thin, interoffice mail envelope and showing it to the audience.
        Jim closes with, "I hope Steve's creative spirit lingers at Apple for a long time."
        No doubt, there'll be many tributes and remembrances. Here's a quotation from the president of The Heritage Foundation, Edwin J. Fuelner, "As for journalism and reading in general, we have now gone back to where we started: the biblical tablet. The elegant slab we take with us wherever we go can do the same for us and take us, no matter where we are, anywhere in the universe our imagination wants to visit.
        ". . .  this half-Arab boy who was given up for adoption at birth and went on to drop out of college was able to transform the lives of individuals across the world because he lived and worked in this country."
     

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iCloud on Snow Leopard?

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        Prez Art Gorski clarifies questions about Lion,  Leopard and the iCloud.  "I've got Lion installed on my new MacBook Air, but my 4 year old Mac Mini still runs Snow Leopard. Rather than upgrade the memory (which I think will be required for good performance with Lion), I've decided to leave Snow Leopard on the Mini until I replace it within a year or so.
        "In Apple's announcements today, the iCloud presentation only mentioned Lion, and not Snow Leopard, and there is no solid information on the Apple web site. However, over on the MobileMe discussion forum (Apple Communities), there is a thread with a screenshot that's interesting. A developer testing iCloud opened up the old .Mac system preference on a Mac running 10.4 and the dialog said he couldn't activate .Mac (remember, this is 10.4, so it wasn't called MobileMe yet) because he had upgraded to iCloud. The interesting part of the dialog said he needed to upgrade to 10.6.9 to use iCloud."
        Art summarizes, "So it looks like Snow Leopard may very well be supported, and that there will be a 10.6.9 update coming out before iCloud goes live this month."

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Seeing Stars & Planets

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        This month's Prescott Astronomy Club meeting on October 5 will feature John Carter and his presentation, "Planets in Motion."  The meetings are always held at the Prescott Public Library in the Founders Suite from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. every first Wednesday of the month.  John will be using his MacBook Pro; his slides were created using NeoOffice.  Take a look at NeoOffice here.  "All are welcome," John announces.

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Editing a Plist

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"Apple provides a set of developer tools with every Mac. It’s called Xcode. It is an optional install in the OS X install DVD. Xcode provides three similar tools to edit a plist file in a way that is so common-sense (to me, anyway) that I find it hard to imagine anyone using any other tool for editing a plist, especially paying money for something that is already free. These tools are Xcode, Property List Editor, and Dashcode. I find it difficult to imagine that any other tool for editing a plist can make it any easier to use than what Apple has done."Notice in the image below how many different applications are compatible with editing a plist file when I right-click on a plist file:

"Not everyone will see all those applications. Notice that Property List Editor is the default. That makes sense to me. In that list, only Coda and TextWrangler are not part of the Developer’s Xcode tool kit. My preference would be to use Xcode, as it offers far more features than any of the others, but Property List Editor offers simplified methods for quick edits that would require no special handling. "For those who didn’t choose to optionally install the Xcode package from their install DVD, they can download the latest version from Apple. And if anyone is wondering if they need to download Xcode, the answer is no. It is something that simply adds to a Mac developer’s toolbox of goodies." Now John adds, "In Lion, the Property List Editor has been dropped as a standalone application. It is now fully integrated in XCode. If you click 'open with...' on a .plist-file and select XCode.app, XCode will bring up the Property List Editor, but it's no standalone app anymore."

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Time Machine Isn't Permanent, Either

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        Thanks to David Passell for the following important info.
        "Time machine is a very good program for going back if something goes wrong, but don’t use it as a backup for things you might want to go back to in the present. If you open Time Machine preferences you will note the last line, 'The oldest backups are deleted when your disk gets full.'
        "The nasty thing about it is that you get the warning after it has happened. (A clue is when menu icon turns for a long time). Then you open Time Machine and find out nothing but the last month or less is still backed up. If you think you can go back to that choice picture/article/etc. you deleted to save space, you are out of luck.
        "I have had it happen to me more than once. The following conditions may cause this to happen:
      • Forgetting to exclude Parallels virtual machines.
      • Connecting a new disk drive and putting a clone of your system or a sandbox on it.
      • Creating or downloading a large video or program file (Lion upgraders take notice).
It is probably a good idea to turn off Time Machine before doing a large download or any operation that may cause a backup of it all to occur. Before starting Time Machine again go to Options and exclude the new drives."
         At this point David offers his closing comment, "One last thing about Time Machine: I am considering purchase of a larger drive to replace the 500 GB drive I have been using since 2008. (I lost those early time machine records long ago). However, I have seen no instruction on transferring an existing Time Machine to a new drive to preserve the old ones and continue with new. Could I clone the Time Machine to a partition in the new drive, and then select the partition in the new drive as 'Use for Time Machine'?"