Here's what Ward Stanke says, "Pixelmator was written for the Mac, and it has a more intuitive Mac-like interface than GIMP. I personally prefer it over GIMP or even Photoshop."
Pixelmator is a Photoshop-like picture editor. It has many, but not all, of the same features at a tenth of the cost. He points out that it's currently on sale for $14.99 (normally around $60.00, and this is for a limited time). The site does not say when the sale is over, but hurry, take a look.
How Photo Stream Works
"If you'd like to understand a bit more about how Photo Stream works, take a look at this article," Jim Hamm informs us.
Fix Photos: GIMP + Mountain Lion
John Carter knows photography! He informs us, "The older version of GIMP (<= 2.6) does not work in Mountain Lion because it requires the older version of X11. However, the latest version of GIMP (2.8) works on Mountain Lion and all previous versions of Mac OS X."
(Forgot what GIMP is? John's previous entry “Fix Those Photos” was posted November 14, 2011 which describes features in GIMP, a tutorial on Resynthesizer, and includes John's step-by-step, how to install.)
"Get the latest version of GIMP here. If you really like GIMP and want to help keep its development going, make a contribution of any amount, preferably a minimum of $10, on that page."
Google's New Authentication Process
"Here's a MacWorld article providing further details on a new two-step authentication process available from Google," begins Jim Hamm. He goes on, "Since I use Gmail I thought this might be a nice security feature to use. After reading the article, I'm not so sure. Seems a bit complex and convoluted. I think I'll wait for now and see if this authentication process becomes a bit simpler later on."
Time to Change Your Password?
You may have decided now is the time to change your password to something tougher. Check these sites:
Google's Olympic Doodles
Amazon & Apple Security to Blame
The latest information on how Wired writer Mat Honan's iCloud and Twitter accounts were hacked is found here at AppleInsider. Son, Peter, sends this link to Wired. Be sure to read this.
See the earlier posts about this hacking, "Apple's Fault" on 8-5, and "Hacking Incident Warns Us About Passwords" on 8-4, and how Amazon and Apple security measures were factors that caused this mayhem.
iCloud Vulnerability, Continued . . .
Here's another story in the saga about iCloud vulnerability, sent to us by Jim Hamm. He comments, "Apple has an article explaining what to do about iCloud if you plan to sell your Mac or other Apple device.
"What is not clear in Apple's article (at least to me) is that your device must be connected to the internet to decommission iCloud. Although, thinking about this, it does make sense. But it's easy to overlook, and it could be made plainer.
"As a side note, one must also de-authorize the device from iTunes as well before selling your Mac or other Apple device. If I recall correctly, only five devices can be authorized to play iTunes under one account.
His final comment, "I imagine we'll learn more about the pros and cons of using iCloud as time goes on."
Running Windows Apps in Mountain Lion
"It's cheaper than purchasing Parallels and Windows 7 just to run a few Windows applications," explains John Carter as he sends info on Crossover. He says, "Crossover has a new upgrade for Mountain Lion. Those Mac users who have upgraded to Mountain Lion or are waiting for the Crossover update, I can attest to the fact that the new Crossover upgrade works in Mountain Lion and you can now use Quicken 2010 (Windows app) and other Windows applications under Crossover in Mountain Lion.
"The issue with the older version of Crossover on Mountain Lion is that the older version required X11. Mountain Lion will not run X11. Instead, Mountain Lion installs XQuartz, which is an upgraded version of X11. Without X11, Crossover will not work in Mountain Lion — or any other Mac OS X version for that matter. So, if you have something other than Mountain Lion and haven't yet used Crossover to run a Windows applications, and you want to do that, you will have to download and install XQuartz to work with the latest version of Crossover. That is, if the latest version of Crossover will run on the earlier versions of Mac OS X.
"If you do not have a current annual subscription to Crossover to be able to download and install the latest version, it will cost you $59.95. This is far cheaper than purchasing Parallels and Windows 7 just to run a few Windows applications."
Apple's Fault?
This shocking bit of news comes from Jim Hamm who's been following the hacking issue he wrote about. See this. Scroll down to yesterday's posting on the hacking incident.
Screen Sharing Explained
Explaining screen sharing, John Carter says, "Now that I have Mountain Lion on my iMac and having discovered that iChat has been replaced with iMessages, I poked around until I discovered that screen sharing is still available with Mountain Lion. It just wasn't as obvious to me as it was before. Now that I know where it is and how to show my Buddy list, getting to screen sharing is actually quite simple.
"The Buddy list in iMessages is the same as with iChat, so no surprises there. If the Buddy list doesn't show up right when you start iMessages, the hotkey Cmd-1 will bring it up or put it away (it's a toggle, just like in iChat).
"The real change is that the old iChat is now broken up into iMessages and FaceTime. You can start a video chat in either FaceTime or iMessages, but you can only start a text or voice chat in iMessages and you can only do screen sharing in iMessages. When doing a video chat in iMessages, it brings up FaceTime."
Got it? If not, let John Carter know. He teaches SIGs and helps make computers easier to do!
RSS Feed Solutions Described
Mountain Lion no longer supports RSS feeds in either Mail or Safari, but John Carter to the rescue. He offers this description and solution: "If you are currently subscribed to either the PMUG website RSS or the Newsletter RSS, you should consider one of the many alternatives for receiving RSS feeds.
"I use NetNewsWire, the free version. It works, but not quite the way I would like it to. When I was subscribing to RSS feeds with Mail, I could delete news that I didn't care to keep. You can't do that in NetNewsWire, at least not in the free version.
"NetNewsWire also automatically deletes old news. It seems the only way to hang onto a copy of any news item is to display it, copy it, and paste it into a document. But then, you can still go to the site that delivered the news feed and retrieve any material there by searching for the topic. Now the funny part of this is for me, I rarely go back and reread any news. I do at times refer to it to pass on information that others are asking about.
"To subscribe to an RSS feed in Mountain Lion, you first have to have an RSS news reader installed on your computer. Next, open Safari and go to the website that you want to subscribe to their RSS feed. Click on the RSS icon. It opens NetNewsWire (if that's what you have installed) and pops up a dialogue box. In the dialogue box, enter a decent short title and a description (optional).
"If you are still using Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion and you want to start right away with an RSS reader like NetNewsWire, open Mail -> Preferences and click on the RSS tab. There you will find an option to use Mail or an external reader. Click on the option to use an external reader, then in the Finder window that opens, find and click on the RSS reader, then click OK. Any new RSS feeds that come in will go to that reader. You can now delete the RSS feed in Mail. If you're using Safari as your RSS reader, do pretty much the same thing there in Safari Preferences.
"If you choose to use NetNewsWire, when you click on a news item you will get the short version. To read the long version, you can either double-click on the entry or click on the title of the news feed - this appears if large blue letters just above the short version."
(Click to enlarge the illustrations.)
(Click to enlarge the illustrations.)
John winds up his instructions with, "In NetNewsWire preferences you select to open the long version in NewNewsWire (in a separate tab) or in your default browser."
Hacking Incident Warns Us About Passwords
The latest on this situation is updated 8-5. Read the whole thing. Jim Hamm sent this link about a horrible hacking of a man's iCloud account. This evening John Carter sent a further warning of the need to establish strong passwords to avoid such a terrible thing. Here's the first from Jim: "Here is a scary tale of woe: Mr Honan's iCloud account was hacked. What's even scarier, the hacker was then able to remotely wipe Mr Honan's iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air! Yes, all dead. If you happen to use a Gmail account, a two-step verification process is available to prevent hacking. As far as I know, this feature isn't available for iCloud. So, one should have a very strong password for your iCloud account. Yes, I know, it's probably remote that your iCloud account will be hacked. Mr Honan thought so, too." But Jim, can that really be true? He wrote back with two other sites on the issue. Here and here. John Carter went into more detail on what we should do about our own passwords. ". . . if your passwords are short and simple, be prepared to be hijacked and potentially lose all the money in your bank or all the files on your computer. "A strong password contains a mix of letters and numbers with at least one uppercase letter, and the password should be at least 8 characters long. A very secure password will be 10 or more characters long. The password should never contain a word that can be found in the dictionary or letters or numbers in a sequence or that repeat. "Some of my clients do not even have a password to login to their computer, and this is a grave mistake because it makes all your other passwords in the Keychain Access application accessible to anyone that manages to hack into your computer.
"Do yourself a favor and use passwords that are complete garbage. Write them down where you know you can access them quickly. Protecting yourself will save me a trip to help recover your files — if that's even possible. Smile when you have to type in that long gibberish because you know you're being protected. After a few times of typing it in, it will become second nature.
"One approach is to alternating case, intermix numbers with letters, and where allowed, toss in a symbol. For your different passwords, you only need to make one letter or number different or add one letter or number."
So, consider yourself warned, thanks to Jim and John.
Now, Jim Hamm brings us the update of 8-5. "Here's update three from the guy who was hacked via iCloud and had his iPhone, MacBook Air and iPad wiped clean:
"Update Three: I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn’t password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions. Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I’m back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were."
And here's Jim's final comment -- at least for now! "The hacker sure must have been one smooth talker to convince Apple's tech support to let him into Honan's iCloud account, which wasn't his. So much for strong passwords. It seems they can be circumvented. According to another report, the hacker then used Apple's 'Find My Phone' service to remotely wipe the three devices."
Precautions About Java
Got Java? Note these precautions forwarded to us from Jim Hamm.
"Here's another article describing the risk of keeping Java enabled on your browser. If you need to access websites that require Java, I like the suggestion in the article to have a browser set aside for this purpose. I think Chrome might be good for this. As I've mentioned previously, I have Java disabled in Safari and haven't had any problems accessing websites. It seems there are fewer of them nowadays."
Jim goes on to say, "I'm surprised that Oracle hasn't been more aggressive in patching Java and making it more secure against malware. There is some debate going on between Oracle and Google on who "owns" Java. See this article.
"Regardless of the court outcome, I think it's wise to disable Java in your browser, just to be on the safe side."
But Jim, is Java the same as JavaScript in the Preferences in Safari? "No, they are completely different programs."
iPhones vs. Those Other Phones
Watch Those Emails!
Jim Hamm sends this latest: "You probably are already cognizant about this subject, but here's an article about protecting your computer against Java malware. I had disabled Java on my Mac some time ago but hadn't done so on my PC till now, when I read this article. However Java is used on a computer, I haven't noticed missing it once it was disabled.
"In an unrelated malware incident involving attempted "phishing", I received an email a couple of days ago that looked like it was from Amazon thanking me for my order of Bose speakers for $120. Well, I hadn't ordered any speakers and there was different links in the message that one could click -- but I didn't click any of them. What was interesting was a message to the side that said this might be a "phishing" attempt. Have no idea how/why this was in the email. Anyway, I just deleted the email and checked to insure a charge hadn't got on our credit card for this amount. It hadn't. However, the document from Amazon sure looked real.
"What with the proliferation of purchases online, think about all the places/websites where you have used your credit card — or at least I have. The bad guys are constantly on the prowl looking for ways to penetrate these websites — and your computer — to steal your credit card number. A life-long battle between them and us it seems," Jim comments.
More Details on Mountain Lion
More details on Mountain Lion come to us from Jim Hamm. Wi-Fi Scanner Tool. "Save As" Function. Tips and Tricks.
Curiosity Due to Land on Mars, August 5
And you thought your computer was a scientific marvel . . . but expand your imagination viewing the fascinating video of details of Curiosity, a car-size robotic explorer which is set to land on Mars on Sunday night, August 5. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120731.html
Is it worth the $$$? Jim Hamm comments, "Now this IS rocket science, it IS amazing, and it IS amazingly complex. Look at what all has to happen to make a landing on Mars, which is scheduled for August 5. I hope it turns out okay, but the odds don't look so good to me.
"Now, I'm a fan of discovery and innovation, but I have to wonder, what did this cost and what will the average person get out of it? Could the money spent have been put to better use? I'm sure there's lots of opinions on this."
iCloud Info Posted on Tips 'N Tricks
To help you sort out the information available about iCloud, our PMUG webmaster John Carter has created a document containing all the info that Jim Hamm and Art Gorski talked about. It's posted here, on Tips 'N Tricks on the PMUG site.
Lawyer's Advice
Ginger Carlson sends this link to a site with advice from Steven Weisman who is an author, lawyer, and college professor who posts warnings about scams being circulated.