A New "Kid" on the Block

Aurora HDR Pro is a new Mac app that is going to change how you edit photos on a Mac.This new app will offer so much more than any other HDR photo editor out there. Power, flexibility, speed, creativity are yours for the taking. Intrigued? Learn more about Aurora HDR here. Available on November 19, 2015, you can pre-order now for a discount price of $89. (This is a third party app and is not available in the App Store.) John R. Carter Sr.

El Capitan Spotlight Feature

Searching for a file in El Capitan has gotten a lot easier by using the Natural Language feature in Spotlight. Searching for things like ”Emails from Amazon last month” will bring up all of your order confirmations for items that you bought recently for a quick review.

You can be specific with spotlight and ask it to show you document types such as "Presentations I worked on in December” for any keynote projects.

Can't remember when you created a document? No problem. Simply search for something like “PDFs containing budget" to find documents for specific phrases. -- John R. Carter Sr.

SCAM ALERT!

If you get a message that claims to be from Apple about your iTunes Account - DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK!  This is a scam. Here’s an image of the message that I just received. This message has been sent to abuse@apple.com in hopes that they can find this guy and send him to jail. PastedGraphic-1

To help us identify what is a scam or phishing email, Apple has provided the following website:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204759

John Carter

YouTubeRed

Occasionally I will watch a YouTube video. Probably you do, too. I hadn't thought much about how it was financially supported. It is owned by Google, and apparently has been losing big money every year. Presumably Google is trying a way to make money on YouTube by introducing YouTubeRed -- a monthly paid-subscription service for videos. There are varied blogs on this concept. Here's one opinion. And here's another blog from a few months ago, blaming the app Adblock (which blocks ads on websites) for causing a significant reduction in income generated from clicking advertising links. Such as on YouTube.

I have used Adblock in the past (I don't now) -- especially when the ads became so obtrusive they made it difficult to read or enjoy a website. But the second blog makes a valid point by mentioning all the blogs and newsletters we get to read on the internet, usually free, aren't free at all. The writers need to be paid. So, how do they get paid? By advertising.

The reduction in ad revenues has seriously affected the publishing business -- look at the impact on magazines and newspapers. We've been doing our reading on the internet, usually for free! Will the reduction in ad revenue start affecting the amount and quality of what we're now able to read on the internet? Interesting question.

Should we all stop using ad blockers of any kind on websites so our internet reading remains free? Or?

Jim Hamm

IPv4 Addresses Have Run Out

Okay, this article may be a bit more technical than you would normally read, but I found it interesting. You may too, and it's worth a read -- at least I thought so. This article explains how every internet-connected device and website is assigned a unique number -- that's how they find each other. Briefly stated: all the unique numbers available under IPv4 (which is what we've been using for years) have been used in North America. What to do and what does this mean for you? That's what the article is all about. Go to IPv6. The article reminds me that I probably need to update the router we have in our house. It is an Apple Extreme Router, and I believe it is about 8 years old. Still working fine, but it does need to be upgraded, for a variety of reasons -- not just because of eventually going to IPv6.

Jim Hamm

A Quick Guide to a Mac

Some of the people I talk to really are not all that familiar with the Mac. They might not even be all that familiar with Windows even if they came from a Windows background. MakeUseOf has provided a handy reference guide for those who are switching from Windows to a Mac, but this guide is also extremely useful for anyone new - or old - to a Mac. Take a look at it, please. You might be surprised how easy it is to master using a Mac.

John Carter

What About that Email You Just Got?

An email you received contains an underlined URL for you to click to see something online. But should you click to open something you’re not sure about?Hold your horses! Put your cursor somewhere in that URL, but don’t click. Quickly a little box comes up right there attached to the pointing finger of your cursor. It gives you the whole URL so you can decide if it is something you want to click and open, or not.

Elaine Hardt

How to Fix Bad iOS 9 Battery Life

Jim Hamm recently experienced an unusual battery drain on his iPhone, running iOS 9. He read the following article, and made several changes in various settings. He found the culprit for his heavy battery use -- an app "ClockRadio". He does not use this app, and recently turned it on just to see what it was all about. Unknown to him, once opened it started a lot of background activity, which consumes battery power. He shut it down, and hopefully it won't do any more background activity.

The following article gives some helpful tips on improving battery life on your iPad or iPhone.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/09/24/how-to-fix-bad-ios-9-battery-life-2/

Computer Chips Made of Wood

Elaine Hardt found this short piece posted in the November issue just out from Popular Mechanics giving a few details about an biodegradable, environmentally friendly microchip. Why? How? When? It is on page 86 of the magazine.

Computer Chips Made of Wood

                                                                                                                   David Lawrence

Your TV, phone, and Xbox are hard to get rid of, and not just for sentimental reasons. The electronic devices we use every day are powered by microchips, and those microchips contain precious or harmful elements like silicon, gold, gallium, and arsenic. You don't want these things sitting in landfills, where the chemicals can leak into the ground. But right now that's exactly what many do. This issue prompted an idea from University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jack Ma and his team: Why not make the chips out of wood? The crucial circuits are still made of silicon or gallium arsenide, but in a quantity up to five thousand times smaller than that of typical chips. Those circuits, about a hundred nanometers thick, are placed on a base of cellulose nanofibril—wood that has been broken down to the nanoscale, then reassembled into what is essentially a thin, durable paper. The result is a biodegradable, environmentally friendly microchip. Consumers won't be able to buy the chips directly, but Ma says that three major computer chip manufacturers could soon be making them. —Jake Cappucino

Will Your Next Mac be Biodegradable?

New York Times article recently appeared that once again claims that recycling is a waste (pun intended) of time and money. Is this something like the argument over global warming? What does make sense to John Carter is to increase the cost of collecting garbage and let some of that money go into research for developing better biodegradable products.

This has nothing to do with a Mac, unless you consider that sometime in the future it won’t matter if you dump your old Mac in the trash - because it will simply disappear as another biodegradable item. Just don’t let it get wet while you’re using it.

If you can get your hands on a copy of the November issue of Discover magazine, take a peek at the article on “Meet the Lean, Green, Flying Machine,” or how to make an almost fully biodegradable drone. Yep, we’re getting there.

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Why force quitting apps to save battery life is a terrible idea

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Jim Hamm found a very helpful and informative article on when/how to shut down apps in your iPhone or iPad.  Quick summary: it's best to just use the home button to shut down apps.  He was not doing this but was using the wrong procedure as outlined in the article. Shared from Zite: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/10/09/why-force-quitting-apps-to-save-battery-life-is-a-terrible-idea/

 

How to enable Wi-Fi calling on your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus | iMore

Jim Hamm said that although this article mentions turning on wi-fi calling with AT&T on an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, it will work with the iPhone 6 as well. He turned his on, and said It will be interesting to see if he ever needs this feature.  He cannot see a downside by enabling this feature. http://www.imore.com/how-enable-wi-fi-calling-your-iphone-6s-or-6s-plus

AT&T's WiFi calling feature is now available

If AT&T is your carrier and you have an iPhone with iOS 9, here is an article you may want to read....Jim Hamm Shared from Zite: AT&T's WiFi calling feature is now available Engadget - It's been just a few days since the FCC granted AT&T's waiver request that allowed the company to finally turn on its WiFi calling feature, and now WiFi calling is officially live. AT&T confirmed as much in a blog on its site, and it works just as you'd expect. Right now, only an iPhone with iOS 9 will work, but as long as you're on a WiFi connection, your phone will route calls through that connection if your cellular signal is bad. It's a feature that T-Mobile and Sprint have provided for a while now, but regardless it's good news for a select group of customers on the USA's second-biggest wireless network. We're hoping that other phones besides the iPhone soon, but if you are among that select group of compatible customers, you can give it a try now.