Verizon Wireless continues it's offensive agains the iPhone and AT&T. I really makes me wonder if we'll ever see an iPhone on Verizon. Rumors suggest that Apple's next iPhone will be a hybrid phone capable of being on either a GSM or CDMA network.
This would certainly make it possible for Apple to sell the iPhone to any carrier in the world, including Verizon and Sprint. However, it will be interesting to see if Verizon and Apple can make up after these negative ads. Granted the ads are mostly attacking AT&T. However, this latest ad is clearly aimed at the iPhone too. I'm sure Steve doesn't like his pride and joy being referred to as a "misfit".
So in our first installment we spoke of doing a simple Finder backup of data from our Mac. Remember Data?
No not from Star Trek TNG — One of my favorite characters — but the data that you create in your Mac. Pictures, Music, Movies, Documents and more.
So Why did he say get 2 thumb Drives?
"Thumb Drives" are officially know as "USB Flash Drives".
Here is the process and the reason
- Click once on the "House" icon – This is your Home directory. Then hold down the Apple key and tap the "I" key. This will tell you how much data is in your house. Hopefully it will not be more data than the capacity of your thumb drive. If the Get info for the amount of data is less than the thumb drive you are in great shape. If it's more, buy the largest thumb drive over that amount you can afford.
- Insert your thumb drive into a USB port on your Mac. The drive should appear shortly on your desktop and you can name it because it will probably come up "untitled" or "No Name". I would call it something like "Backup Drive A".
- Drag the Icon of your "House" on top of the icon for your thumb drive. The copy process should begin with the handy dandy progress bar. You can watch it progress, or go get something yummy to eat and return when it's done. Secret Hint – If you have just a small amount of data, it won't take long to copy but, you can still go get something yummy anyway.
- After the Finder copy has completed. Drag the icon of the thumb to the Trash and it wll be in eject status. You can now remove it from the Mac.
- Repeat the process above again. The only difference is when you get to the step to name your second thumb drive, name it something like …. hold on ….. here it comes …. "Backup Drive B".
Now what do I do with these drives?
Now that you have 2 copies of your data backed up, you are half way to protecting yourself. This what you'll do with the 2 thumb drives.
- A safe deposit box is a good place to store one of the 2 thumb drives. It's offsite or away from where the Mac is (unless you live in a bank). If you don't have access to a safe deposit box. A trusted friend or family member's home. Maybe locked in the desk at work. Just somewhere safe and secure from the location of the Mac that you backed up.
- The other USB thumb drive you can keep at your same location as the Mac. Maybe in another room or in the home safe. That way it's there for quick restores.
Restores ….. Restores….. Vat ist dis Restore you speak ovf?
Ahhh…… Fritz ….ve talk of restore in the next segment…Ya!
First of all, Welcome to the Inaugural week of the MacNews Blog. We hope that you enjoy this new format just as you've enjoyed MacNews in the past. 
I like a workflow that flows and I like things to be as uncomplicated as I can make them. That includes visually. So, I was forced into a task that I'd been dreading for a long time.
Have you ever taken a really good look at that birds nest? You know the one I mean, the one lurking under your computer station. The birds nest of cables that you can tangle your feet in. The birds nest that could probably start a small fire. The birds nest that you dread going into when, heaven forbid, you have to unplug a device.
The reason you tuck and shove your cables up under your station is because you don’t want to see them. It’s an unrelenting organizational mess. Like hangers in your closet, cables multiply. So you hide them to not have to deal with the mess. You know, out of sight out of mind. Well that worked for me for awhile, but the day came when I had to go in. I had to go under there and unplug a device.
Unplugging the end connected to the printer was easy, but following the cable behind the station, under the desk, and around to the power outlets, into the nest of other cables and tugging on it to ascertain the correct end, well, that took a minute. Or three.
It seems that it took me longer to find the correct end of the cable than it did to purchase the item, have it shipped to me, unpack it and plug it in.
So, enough is enough.
Greetings!
Can you believe it? Another Apple Retail store right in your backyard, are you interested in joining the Apple Team?
As a manager with Apple Retail I am excited to share with you that we are currently hiring at our Apple Retail Store at Briarwood in Ann Arbor, MI. We are currently seeking to find exceptional candidates to fill the positions of Specialist. We wanted to reach out to you knowing you too have a love for the Mac, and may yourself be interested in joining our team, or may have friends you can refer! We would welcome the opportunity to speak with you or anyone you see as a fit for these new openings.
For further information about job opportunities, please visit www.apple.com/jobs/us/store/.
Thank you for your time and referrals!
Best Regards,
Can you create a disc with HD content without a Blu-Ray burner?
Yes you can – but not with the software that came with your Mac. You'll need to pop for Toast 9 or 10 and the optional Blu-Ray Plug-In. Toast, as you may know, is software from Roxio that takes your disc burning well past the built-in functions of OS X. For simple backup or creating DVDs, OS X and iDVD will take care of most of your needs. But if you want to do something beyond the basics, then you'll need something like Toast.
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I recently decided that it was time for a change in mice. I've loved my cordless Mighty Mouse, but constantly having to clean the tiny track ball was annoying me to no end. I was also enjoying the multi-touch trackpad on my MacBook, so when Wacom released the new Bamboo touch tablets, I decided to make the change.
I thought about the least expensive Bamboo Touch, but decided to go with the Bamboo Pen & Touch (list $99, street $79) so that I would have the pen for photo retouching. As it turned out, I need the pen for more than that. The touch control is not as consistent as the Apple built-in trackpad. The drier my skin, the worse it is, and I think it's due to the dual nature (pen and touch) of the tablet. I find myself grabbing the pen to drag and drop graphics and text. It's annoying.
For straight email and web surfing, the touch controls are great. Swiping two fingers to page back and forth is easy. Horizontal and vertical scrolling with two fingers is great. Zooming in and out with the same pinch and spread motions that are used on the iPhone and iPod touch is marvelous. That said, I still had to grab my Mighty Mouse while trying to customize a video on JibJab. Some click & drag functions just seem to be easier with a mouse. I don't know whether to blame the software or the touch pad itself. It's not as consistent as the trackpad on my MacBook, but then, the MacBook can't use the stylus.
I'm not totally in love with the Bamboo Pen & Touch, but as I adjust to it and fine-tune the settings, things should improve. The pressure-sensitive pen is still great for photo retouching, and this version of the Bamboo comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements (v. 7 for Windows and v. 6 for Mac) and Nik Color Efex Pro. Unfortunately, the preference panel settings are universal only. No separate settings for individual programs. With luck, that will be changed in the future.
A minor gripe is the location of the USB cable. In order to use the tablet with my right hand, I had to set it for left-hand use. The cable kept it too far to the side of the keyboard, and the cable also had a tendency to flop up over the numeric keypad on the keyboard. Cable should come off a top or bottom corner, not the middle of the side edge/ The tablet also sits too flat to the desk to be comfortable for my wrist. It's currently sitting on a book that raises it a centimeter.
If Apple had released the new Magic Mouse a couple of weeks earlier, I might not have bought this. While the pen is nice, I don't use it that often. And while I'm getting used to the touch controls, they're still not as solid as the MacBook and MacBook Pro. If anyone wants to give it a try, I'll have it at the next MacGroup meeting.
If you have a non-Apple keyboard, you know that it can be frustrating to eject a CD or DVD that is not showing on the desktop. Here are simple instructions on how to add an Eject button to your menu bar. The added benefit is that it will also give you access to any external optical drives.
News is coming at us faster than we can keep up and while we all have our favorite websites to check on each day, I'm going to venture a bet that you probably don't have time to constantly refresh each site throughout the day to see if anything new has been posted. That's where RSS comes in!
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically it's a "feed" from the site. Each time a new story is posted the site, the feed is updated. Mac OS X's Safari browser has had RSS support for years. However, since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and of course Snow Leopard, now you can subscribe to RSS feeds right in Mail. I LOVE THIS! I'm in my email multiple times a day and right along side my email messages are stories/posts from my favorite sites and blogs. Each update comes in just like an email message. I can see the first few lines of the story, maybe a picture too and decide if I want to read more or not. If I want to read more I simply click the "Read More" link and then I'm taken over to Safari (or your default browser) to read the entire article. If it's something that I'm NOT interested in, I just hit delete and it's gone from my inbox. It's sooooo simple! There's another reason that I like my RSS feeds in Mail. It makes it EASY to forward the info to someone else that I know that needs it. Since it comes into Mail like an email, I can treat it like one by hitting the Forward button. A new email message pops up containing the blog post and I just key in the email address(es) that it's going to and hit send.
I came across an obscure Dear Abby for Mac users.
Here is one of the posts about Mail.
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