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Password Problems

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        After speaking to the PMUG meeting this morning, Jim Hamm informs us,  "Here's another article about the NSA after our passwords again. As I discussed in my presentation today, articles about passwords and password hacking are increasingly in the news.

        "It's a tough call to balance the needs of national security with the needs for personal privacy."
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14 Mac Tips

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      " Here's an article with some helpful tips (they refer to them as 'hacks') for your Mac," Jim Hamm introduces his latest email to us.   "You may already be knowledgeable of these tips, but a new one (to me) I just tried was the terminal command 'purge' to free up memory. I'm not sure what it exactly did, but the command definitely freed up memory on my MacBook Air and my apps and music kept right on running. 

        "My 'Air' only has 4GB of memory, and free memory tends to disappear after using my Air for awhile, so this tip is helpful and quick to use. The article refers to a video wherein the author mentions a free App from the App Store titled 'FreeMemory,' which purportedly does the same thing. The app gets good ratings in the App Store."  
        (And if you come to PMUG on Saturday you can chat with Jim. He's the speaker this month.) 
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iOS 7 and 10.8.5 Update

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       John Carter reports on his experience with updates. "I updated my iPad 4, my iPhone 5, and Jackie's iPhone 4S.

        "No problems with my stuff. It took a long time, but everything came up normally.
        "Jackie's 4S was a different story. I did that one last.
        "The short story is that Verizon was overloaded with updates, and they couldn't keep up. Apple was also inundated, and they couldn't keep up. Hence, during the update process for the 4S, Apple had a hiccup and the 4S was crippled during the update. Not to worry. A fresh start made everything right — almost.
        "One thing that happened with the 4S that did not happen with the iPad 4 or the iPhone 5 was right after the iOS7 update completed. I got a notice that a new update was available for the carrier on the 4S. I did that, too.
        "When I finally got to use the 4S, it would not connect to Verizon. Getting on the Internet was no problem — but no phone service. A call to Verizon revealed that many people were having the same problem. The fix was to do a complete reset of the phone (wiping all data off) and restore the phone from a backup through iTunes. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention this - MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP YOUR DEVICES BEFORE YOU START THE UPDATE!
        "After the 4S was restored (the second time), I was able to validate the connection to Verizon and everything worked."
                                  Take a deep breath, John has more info to share! 
        "So what's really new with iOS7? I mean, really new? Not just in appearances, but in functionality. The calendar had the biggest surprise. The familiar interface is not only gone, but one of the features is hidden. In order to see your calendar entries as a list, you have to tap on the Search icon. To see the calendar in the month mode, you tap on the name of the month. Then the year shows up where the name of the month was, and tapping on that shows you the whole year. Actually, this is far easier to navigate than it sounds, and I quickly got used to it.
        "I tried to take a snapshot of the screen, but the snapshot does not show everything that you can see. So the image below is a screenshot showing both what the calendar looks like (left side) and what you get when you take a screenshot (right side). (Yes, it was tricky getting this shot.)
        To enlarge the illustration click on it, then click to go back to the post.
        "So what does Jackie think about the update? She was very angry that the phone didn't work, and she had to leave before I got it working again. As for everything else, she's flexible enough to not worry about the changes. Besides, she has me to fall back on.
        "I very much like the new Compass. Apple has added a secondary feature to it - a bubble level. Very neat, especially for me when I need to level my telescope mount."
                                      Here's John's report on the OS X update:
        "So what about the Mac update to 10.5.8. Quite painless on the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and my two MacBook Pros. But one thing happened with Mail that I am not very happy about.
        "I have several mailbox aliases below the Toolbar (boxed in red in the image below.) This gives me quick access to my most frequently used mailboxes. 
        "They were all greyed out. No access. I quickly discovered that I had to remove them and add the aliases back in.
        "Then I discovered that NONE of my Rules were active. I had to go through each of my several dozen Rules and reference the action back to the original mailbox that the message was supposed to be moved to (see red circle in image below). The weird part was that when I reset one, that same mailbox showed up as the default location for the next one that I needed to fix."
        "I'm quite sure that many people will have a serious problem with this, and I'm very surprised that it didn't show up in the Beta testing."
                        Here's John's recommendations: 
        "Do I recommend getting the updates right away? To this I always say, why not? How long do you think you will have to wait before you can know for a fact that  you won't have any problems with the update? Can you live without the update? Certainly! But eventually you will be faced with having to update when one or more of your apps are no longer supported with your old operating system— just like when Classic 9 became unusable. And if you trade your device in, you will get the latest operating system anyway.
        "To update the iPhone, you have to have your computer to get the update. I recommend updating the computer first.
        "One last thing. The iTunes update (11.1) modifies the iTunes library. So if you have more than one computer using the same iTunes library, you're forced to update iTunes on every computer. Besides that, if you are accessing the same iTunes library (or iPhoto library) from different computers, you have to shut down iTunes/iPhoto on one computer before launching iTunes/iPhoto on any other computer. This is such a rare situation that it probably isn't even worth mentioning. But if you have, say, a MacBook Air with a small hard drive and a Mac Mini with a large hard drive, it won't be long before you realize that you should have bought a bigger hard drive for the MacBook Air. This cannot be remedied except by sharing files with another computer or by adding an external hard drive to the MacBook Air - and that uses up one of the only two USB ports on the MacBook Air. And you can't run an external hard drive off of a USB port expander along with any other device, even if the USB expander is powered (or so my experience tells me).
        "For the most part, the updates do not change how any non-Apple app looks or behaves. As vendors start providing updates for their apps, this will undoubtedly change.
        "For the iPhone, just take a deep breath and get the updates in a week or so when things have settled down at Apple and Verizon.
        "For the Mac, get it now."   
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Another iOS 7 Upgrade Report

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       Prez Art Gorski reports on his experiences with the iOS 7 upgrade.  "Well, I upgraded my decrepit iPhone 4 to iOS 7. Even though a lot of features aren't available on a phone this old, I like the improvements that I do get. Mary Ann upgraded her iPad 2 with no problems as well.

        "Macworld.com has a huge list of articles covering all aspects of iOS 7 that are very informative.
        "We'll be upgrading to iPhone 5s's shortly, so that will be even better."  
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iOS 7 Comments

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        Here's Jim Hamm's comments on upgrading to iOS 7.  "Realizing that it's better to wait for some time before updating to a new iOS, I, of course, ignored my own advice and went ahead just now and updated my iPhone 5, iPad 2, and iPad Mini to iOS 7. 

       "All went well, and so far no problems or bugs noted, but discovery still underway. iOS 7 is quite different visually, functionally, and aesthetically -- but so far I like it quite well. I'm listening to the new iTunes Radio as I type this, and I'm gonna appreciate this as I enjoy listening to music as I surf the net on my computer. I suspect iTunes Radio may well put a little hurt on Pandora and other radio apps."
        And now, what did Zee do?  "My wife was showing me a few tips after her update and one she liked was telling Siri to play James Taylor -- which Siri obligingly did. And she asked Siri 'what is the weather in Prescott?' -- which Siri kindly told her. Kinda cool."
        Jim winds up this report with, "I did the update by plugging my devices into my MacBook Air, and the process went much quicker than my wife's updates, which she was doing via Wifi only and not plugged into her Mac. If you decide to update to iOS 7, don't forget to do a backup first, just in case. I backed up both to iCloud and my MacBook Air -- belt and suspenders, don't you know...(grin)." 

Another iPad Use

        "This past weekend I was at a music festival in Flagstaff and came upon another use for the iPad."  Jim Hamm catches our attention.  
        "The sound technicians, from their control booth way out in front of the stage, was using an iPad, at the control booth, and the new Apple Extreme Router, to wirelessly control the sound of microphones and monitors on the stage. The router was transmitting the commands, via Wifi, from the iPad at the control booth to another iPad on the stage, which, in turn, was connected to the various microphone and monitors." 

        Jim goes on to explain,  "This design saves the technicians time and effort from having to string long cables from the control booth to the microphones and monitors on the stage, which is always such a hassle and there's always concern about people stepping on or tripping over the cables. This design worked flawlessly. Interesting concept, and yet another ingenious use for an iPad."
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Consider Waiting Before Updating

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        A precautionary word of advice comes from Jim Hamm,  "Here's an article with suggestions to wait before updating to iOS 7 on certain devices. Certainly something to think about and consider. No harm in waiting and see what the blogs have to say about the update."   http://osxdaily.com/2013/09/16/wait-before-updating-these-to-ios-7/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+osxdaily+%28OS+X+Daily%29

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Getting Your Money's Worth Out of Your iPad?

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        John Carter will be presenting the answer to this question:  Are you getting your money's worth out of your iPad?  He announces, "If not, then you haven't discovered the many tips and tricks that the iPad has to offer. Not only that, a new version of iOS comes out on 9/18/2013 with some new features that you're sure to want to know about. Maybe you don't have an iPad, but you're thinking about it. Come to the Joint PCS/PMUG SIG and find out what you're missing!"

        Mark your calendar: the meeting date/time is 9/28/2013 from 1 PM to 3 PM in the Prescott Library Founders Suite.
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Camera Features in iPhone 5a

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        He starts off with, "I'm not much of a camera buff, but if you are here is an article describing the new and enhanced camera features in the new iPhone 5S," and then Jim Hamm gives a bit of detail, ending with his grin! 
        "Looks mighty impressive to me. Bet the manufacturers of 'regular' cameras are a bit bit disconcerted to read about all these improvements in the iPhone 5S which, nominally, is supposed to be a phone."
        How to Know If the iPhone 5s Camera Upgrade is Right For You
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-know-if-the-iphone-5s-camera-upgrade-is-right-for-you

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Dropbox Peeks at Your Files

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        "Although I like and use Dropbox frequently, here's an article that reminds us nothing is secure in the 'cloud', unless it's encrypted, and even then NSA might take a peek at your documents," notes Jim Hamm.  Here's the article for you to check: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242384/Dropbox_takes_a_peek_at_files?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2013-09-13

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Apple's Announcements Today

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        Today was the big day.  Take a look at the latest here:  http://www.apple.com   and see keynote,   and look here for two entries posted today: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/ 
       Prez Art Gorski sends along this link http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/apples-overhauled-ios-7-is-coming-september-18-to-an-idevice-near-you/ , with his comment, "In just over a week, your iPad or iPhone will have a software update to iOS 7.  This will be a total makeover, changing the look of just about everything, and adding some new features.  It will take a little time to get used to it all, and hopefully Apple will provide some tutorials for users."