Mac IT Help

Should You Upgrade to a new iPhone?

2018-09-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are asking if they should upgrade to the new iPhone XS, XS Max or XR. There's a ton of articles out there on camera performance, A12 Bionic chip, new waterproof standard, etc. What's not discussed is how it works as..., well, a phone.

The biggest beef I have with my iPhone 6s, besides battery life, is the reception. My cell reception is horrible in many of the areas I frequent. I didn’t pre-order a phone because I want to make sure there’s a real difference in antenna design.

I've done some digging and I thought you might be interested in what I found out. Since I’m going to stick with T-Mobile as my provider I will concentrate on those highlights but ATT & Verizon have similar impacts.

All of the new iPhone models support 27 LTE bands including the new T-Mobile 600MHz LTE band! That means the new phones can access T-Mobile network on more bands. More bands leads to better reception when T-Mobile upgrades their cell towers.

The iPhone Xs and Xs Max & Xr have Multiple in Multiple Out (MIMO) LTE band connection abilities. But only the Xs and Xs Max have 4x4 MIMO. That means they support four antennas at the transmit end and four antennas at the receive end. The Xr only supports 2x2 MIMO. With 4x4 MIMO you can potentially quadruple speeds if you have good cell reception or (like me) in areas of poor reception it will use all 4 antennas ganged together to make for a stronger signal.

In addition to MIMO the phones also have gigabit LTE antennas that use part of the unused WiFi spectrum (where available). This means over short distances (because WiFi reception is limited in distance) you can get VERY fast connections up to gigabit speeds. T-Mobile and others are building out this ability in high congestion areas like sports stadiums, downtown areas, and shopping malls.

All the new phones sold in the US are universal. There is NO difference between a T-mobile version, ATT version or Verizon version. However, if you buy through your provider it will be locked to that provider so buy an unlocked phone or buy it from Apple. All phones purchased through Apple are unlocked.

You can have two SIMS active on two different networks. If you travel or (crosses fingers) if your work allows, you might be able to have 2 phone numbers and one phone. This will use one physical SIM and the e-SIM. However the e-SIM won’t be enabled until later this year.

So, it looks like I’ll upgrade. I’m not sure when or which phone yet but for me it will be either the Xs or the Xr. I’m going to wait for a few of the Xr reviews before I upgrade.

Cord Cutting - Hardware on Sale

2018-03-22T16:46:00.001-07:00

The past few posts I've been writing about cutting the cord, what hardware and software to use. Today I want to let you know that today Best Buy has SiliconDust Tuners on sale.

If you're in the market for a TV Tuner for your Mac now's a great time to buy! I'm not sure how long the sale is on so you better hurry.

SiliconDust HDHomeRun - CONNECT DUO - $100

SiliconDust HDHomeRun - CONNECT QUATRO - $130

SiliconDust HDHomeRun - EXTEND - $160

SiliconDust HDHomeRun - PRIME Tuner with CableCARD - $110

PSA - I'm not affiliated nor compensated by Best Buy or anyone else*

* Not that I'm not adverse to it but no one has offered so far. ;-) But either way I'd let you know.

Cutting the Cord - 64-bit Hardware & Apps

2018-03-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

In my last blog post I wrote about the coming updates to MacOS that requires all applications to be 64-bit compliant. After searching through my Go-To applications I discovered that my current cord-cutting applications will fail when 64-bit is implemented. Bummer! Adding insult to injury my always reliable SiliconDust HDhomerun CONNECT recently died. The question before me was: What hardware do I buy and will the software work with the next MacOS?

History

I have posted before about my desire to shed my dependence on Comcast and reduce my cable bill. Long ago I purchased an Elgato EyeTV tuner. It was a firewire tuner that worked great with my G4 MacPro. When it stopped working I moved on to SiliconDust but continued to use Elgato EyeTV software.

Unfortunately Elgato has moved on and they no longer sell TV tuners or software. They are now focused on their Eve Home IOT hub. Even the Turbo.264 Software I used to edit my MPEG files is no longer sold in the App Store.

"Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems. Unfortunately, Elgato no longer provides support for the Turbo.264 HD QuickTime component nor for 3rd party API access to Turbo.264 HD hardware encoding, for both business reasons and technical limitations."

Both Elgato Hardware and Software tools have been sold off to Geniatech. And it seems Geniatech is more focused on the European market than the US market. OK then, what now? I needed to replace both hardware and software and make sure it was 64-bit and fit my workflow.

The Hardware

One of the reasons that I bought my first SiliconDust tuner was that it was network connected and I could access the 2 tuners from any Mac on my network. In looking at the Geniatech products and other TV tuners available most had USB connections. One box and accessing that from any Mac on the network is feature now rely on so I figured my best option was to stick with SiliconDust.

Since I wanted an Ethernet tuner not USB and only wanted/needed 2 tuners it came down to the old HDhomerun Connect model the newer HDhomerun Duo or the HDhomerun Extended.

The HomeRun Extended has the ability to transcode video to H.264 on the fly so you can stream your content. I don't really need that and since it's more expensive my choice came down to the CONNECT or the Duo.

The CONNECT model is and older hardware & cheap. It's often available for sale and Amazon and other online sites normally have it for under $70. There doesn't seem to be a real functional difference between the CONNECT and Duo models. Even the Silicon Dust web site seems to indicate they are almost the same. So why pay for a new one?

Glad you asked.

*** IMPORTANT***

This took me a quite a few emails but here's the key difference between the CONNECT and the DUO. The old CONNECT model, when using SiliconDust HDhomerun software, is unable to do a channel scan!! The only way to scan for channels is to use a Windows computer.

"A channel scan must be run in Windows when using old HDHomeRun devices with the app. The old devices do not have the ability to run a channel scan locally nor the ability to store a channel lineup, so the Windows program must be used. Newer HDHomeRun devices have additional capabilities and can run the scan themselves, so Windows is not needed for them. If you do not have access to a Windows PC then we would suggest going back to an earlier version of EyeTV that does support the HDHomeRun.

- Silicondust Support"

OK SiliconDust HDHomerun Duo it is.

Software

Now that I had my hardware I needed 64-bit TV tuner software that worked. As previously mentioned I used EyeTV as my tuner software for a long time and it is now supported by Geniatech. Unfortunately Geniatech Support tells me that all HDHomeRun product are no longer supported on EyeTV.

"We just discontinue (sic) support of the HDHomeRun products permanently.You can consider the eyetv u 6 but we can not make sure if it can meet all of your requirements completely. Plese check this link: https://www.geniatech.us/eyetv/

Geniatech EyeTV Support Team"

If you do rely on EyeTV please be aware that version 3.6.9 (7520) still works with High Sierra & SiliconDust hardware. So don't upgrade! If you do upgraded you will find your EyeTV is bricked. It doesn't recognize any SiliconDust hardware.

The good news is that you can downgrade the software and get it working again. Here's the link to version 3.6.9 (7520) download site if you want to grab it.

SiliconDust does have tuner software that works with the Mac. It's a bit different than EyeTV but it works. If you have the newer Duo version of hardware you can use Mac and follow the online instructions to scan the airwaves for channels in your area and watch live TV. Basically you use a web interface (http://my.hdhomerun.com) that scans the local network for your HDHomeRun Tuner.

Click on the "Channels" link in the white box to the left and it will take you to a configuration page based on the IP address of the tuner on your network. This site allows you to upgrade Firmware, and scan for channels. In large urban areas it's not a bad idea to rescan every few months as new channels are added frequently.

Once you have run the scan restart the HDHomerun application and you can now watch live TV.

Of course it's never that easy. The downside of the free HDHomerun software is that there is no DVR functionality built in. To get the ability to record your shows you will need to pay $8/mo. Wow!

Conclusion

So in the end I bought a SiliconDust Homerun Duo network tuner and will use the SiliconDust TV software when Apple requires 64-bit applications. But now I need hunt down the best 64-bit compatiable DVR software for my Mac so I can record the programs I want.

I'll get into that next time.

MacOS 64-bit only - What it means to you

2018-03-17T16:38:00.001-07:00

At WWDC 2017 Apple announced that starting January of this year (2018) MacOS will be moving to 64-bit only applications. If you would like to know more about the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit you can read about it here. This move by Apple means that High Sierra will be the last OS supporting 32-bit applications.

When 10.13.4 is released some time this summer a user will be alerted when launching a 32-bit app letting them know it will need to be updated to 64-bit to work on future MacOS releases. This shouldn't come as a surprise since iOS did the same thing with iOS 11 last year. So how does that impact you? In a nutshell, if you have 32-bit applications you still use they will stop working when Apple moves to it's next major OS.

You may (or may not) be surprised at how many 32-bit applications you still have especially if you are a long time Mac user like me. My collection of old, outdated apps is rather large. That can happen if you are a digital pack-rat after finding something that works, stick with it.

To find the list of 32-bit only apps on your Mac do a self check: Open the "About This Mac" Under the Apple menu and select "System Report"

Scroll down to "Software" And select "Applications" Depending on home many you it may take a while to generate a list. The column on the right tells you if you have a 64-bit application or not.

In the graphic above do you notice that EyeTV is part of this list? That's my current go-to application for recording over the air TV. So now what will I use to record ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) broadcasts? I'll cover some of the implications of moving to 64-bit in future posts.

Do you have any "got-to-have" applications that are 32-bit? Better start looking for updates or replacements.

2018 - Back in Action

2018-03-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Health issues and just simple blog-fatigue has kept me off Mac IT Help for almost a year. I think it's time I started the Blog back up again.

I have a lot of thoughts I think need to be said so look for some updates soon. Starting with Apple's decision to move to 64-bit only MacOS apps. You may not think this will impact you but it will. I know it will change my workflow a lot and I'm not sure I like it.

Look for new content coming soon!

iTunes Stealthy Changes - A Fix!

2017-05-15T16:50:00.002-07:00

Run, don't walk, and update to the iTunes version 12.6.1.25. As of 5/15/2017 it's available from the Apple App Store.

It seems someone at Apple might actually read my blog. Well, Ok, maybe not, but at least they found the error I wrote about last month and actually fixed the mini-player issue! Wow. Kind of nice.

Now if Apple would take a long hard look at and update iTunes and actually separate and streamline the whole media mess my faith in all things Apple would be restored.

iTunes Stealthy Changes

2017-03-31T19:17:00.000-07:00

In the past, I have blogged about how to create and add Ringtones to iTunes. I've also written up a post about How to tag iTunes movies and TV shows. I like iTunes. It has a purpose and, at least in the past, it worked well for me.

Recently things have started to change. I've expressed my frustration with iTunes updates that messed with the behavior of the mini player and I've ranted about general iTunes annoyances.

This past week Apple released MacOS 10.12.4 and updated iTunes to 12.6. In doing so Apple once again messed with the look of iTunes as well as the behavior. Please Apple, STOP IT! iTunes was great once and now it's just a jumbled mess that's fading away.

Today I want to talk about some of the issues and problems brought on by the update and I'll start with the mini player.

When you open iTunes you see a large window of all your media. If you would rather switch to the smaller mini player you need to hover your mouse over the play area and click the boxes that appear.

Yeah, intuitive I know. But that's how it's designed. With iTunes version 12.6 you will now see a slightly larger mini-player than past versions and it's completely devoid of any UI clues.

Again, What was Apple thinking? How are you suppose to know what the controls are or what to do? If you hover the mouse over the window things change and now you see this view:

This makes things a little clearer but based on this view you have no idea what will play if you hit the play button. Is it a song, a movie, a TV show? What??? The most egregious sin of all: Where are the open and close, red, yellow and green buttons in the upper left? How do you close the window to get the large media view back? Good gosh Apple, can you at least be consistent in your UI? PLEASE?!

The key here is to select the ellipsis, that's the 3 little dots on the left by the speaker icon.

If you select "Hide MiniPlayer Large Artwork" EVEN THOUGH IT"S NOT SHOWING, the view changes again.

Why look at that! The close butting has returned in the upper left. If you close the window, the large view of all your media reruns and you are back to where you started. Obvious isn't it?

OK, now that we have some way to control the MiniPlayer what about TV shows? In the past every episode of every season of your TV show showed up when you clicked the icon of that show. Now just the last watched season and it's available shows will be displayed.

If you select the currently visible season (SEASON 6 in the example above) you will now see all available seasons for that show.

In this case I think this change is an improvement. It prevents shows like The Simpsons, 28 Seasons and counting, from taking over you monitor. By only showing one season at a time your scroll time is decreased.

What ever changes Apple makes in their software I just wish they made it a little clearer what changed and how. I'd also appreciate a little effort to unify the behavior of the UI so you don't have to hunt around to figure out how to get things to work.

Are you listening Apple?

Beyond Basic Find: Advanced Searches

2017-01-27T18:19:00.001-08:00

MacOSX has a great search feature called Spotlight. If don't use it you should. It's powerful and has a lot of options. You can learn more about Spotlight here.

However there are times when you want to do a very specific search and for that you either need to use a powerful commercial application like HoudahSpot. It has a lot of options and gives you a lot of flexibility but unless you do a lot of searching it might be overkill.

Mac OS X does have some great search features if you know how to use them. That's what I'm going to talk about today.

Start your search by opening a finder window and typing the standard Mac shortcut for find - Command+F.

Click on the "Name" Dropdown menu and select "Other…"

This will bring up a menu of search options. There are a lot of options. Scroll through the list to see what search variables are available.

In this example I wanted to find all the ripped movies that were HD. To do that I knew I needed to find any file that had a height of 720p or 1080p. It isn't obvious but the variable to search for is Pixel height and/or Pixel width. To enable that search function just click on the "In Menu" checkboxes on the right.

High definition movies today are 4K or higher. That means the display device or content has a horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels. Old school says that 720p (720 pixels) or 1080p (1080 pixels) are still high def. Or at least they are by my ancient TV standards.

In case you need a refresher:

1080p Movies = 1920x1080

720p movies = 1280x720

In some cases movies use a different aspect ratio so if you want to find any movies that are 1080p you need to search for "Pixel Width = 1920". The height might actually be less than 1080.

In my case, I wanted to find all my HD movies in a specific folder so I searched for any file that had Pixel Width greater than 1280.

Play around with the search attributes. By combining variables you can make complex a lot of variables into something you can use. If you plan on using the same search over and over remember to click that "Save" button so you can use it again.

Please Disturb

2016-11-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

If you value your sleep you probably configured your iPhone to use the "Do Not Disturb" function. iOS allows you to silence all calls, texts and alerts for a specific time period. But what if you want to allow calls or texts through even if "Do Not Disturb" set up and active?

Recently, my pregnant daughter asked my wife to help her during birth. Kind of an assistant doula if you will. Since most births occur during the wee hours of the morning my wife needed to set up her phone to allow calls and texts to come through even when "Do Not Disturb" was set.

Before iOS 10 the only way to allow users to call you was to open "Settings", navigate to "Do Not Disturb" and select "Allow Calls From"

BUT...you could only allow calls from all the people in your favorites or a select a specific group you wanted to grant access. If you only wanted one person to have access you would need to set up a brand new group and add that one person. Starting with iOS 10 you can now grant access to a single person inside your contacts application.

Open "Contacts" and select the person you want to grant access and Edit the contact. Now you just need to select "Ringtone" and make sure the "Emergency Bypass" is selected. If you want to allow Texts through as well just edit the "Text Tone" the same way and enable the same "Emergency Bypass" switch.

That's it! Now even if it's the middle of the night that persons calls and texts will make it through and you won't miss the birthday party!

MacOS Sierra - Gatekeeper Security & Downloaded Apps

2016-10-03T11:25:00.002-07:00

MacOS Sierra has been out for a while and most of you have probably downloaded and installed it. One of the focus areas of Sierra is security. Apple has plugged some security holes and added new features to protect the user from security threats as well as self inflicted damage.

In the past Mac users touted the innate security of the UNIX undermining of MacOS vs. the sieve that was Windows. Five or ten years ago that was true. Not so today. Today the Mac is targeted just as much as Windows but thanks to the UNIX base of MacOS it is still harder to crack, but not impossible. Especially if the user is the one installing the Malware.

Every time you download and run an application you are trusting that the creator of that app doesn't have any ill intent. Most of the time you are right and everything is OK. But recently there have been some applications that have been loaded with software that isn't so friendly. To prevent that, Sierra has a built in Gatekeeper that prevents the user from running unsigned applications. That's a good thing but it can sometimes be a pain. If you have ever downloaded an update or application from the Internet and were unable to open it then this tip is for you.

The first thing to know is that you can still open any app you want with a minimum of hassle. After you try to open an app and it fails, go to the System Preferences and open the "Security" Tab. It should show the last application you tried to open and a button saying "Open Anyway" Just click that and try again.

If you want to have the ability to bypass this step and open any application, regardless of where it came from then you need to use the terminal to disable the Gatekeeper default settings.

If it is open close System Preferences and open the Terminal application (usually located in the Utilities folder). Type the following command: "sudo spctl --master-disable" without the quotes.

After you hit return you will be asked to enter your password. Once you do that reopen System Preferences and you should see the a third pick under the security tab allowing you to open downloaded apps from anywhere.

Just remember that just like Uncle Ben said "With great power comes great responsibility" Know where you are getting your applications and make sure that you don't inadvertently give some Phishing scam access to your computer.

If you want to go back to default setting you can open the terminal again and just type "sudo spctl --master-enable"

I hope this tip is helpful but remember to keep safe out there.

Amazon Prime Video & Safari: Let's Call a Truce

2016-05-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

I must admit that it was a sad day when the local Blockbuster Video closed. But only for a day. I quickly got over it when we signed up for Netflix. Once we started to stream our movies and TV shows we never looked back.

Today it seems like every home has at least 2 or 3 video streaming services. My family and I use an Apple TV and routinely stream our own recorded TV Shows, a few Apple provided TV shows and movies as well as Netflix shows. What we don't use is Amazon Prime Streaming. We are a Prime member and have had the service since it started, we just never use it.

One of the main reasons Amazon isn't part of our streaming selections is because they don't offer an Apple TVOS app. The other reason is that I could never get it to work on Safari. As of today Amazon still doesn't offer and TVOS app but I finally figured out how to get it to work on Safari.

Amazon Prime streaming video service comes free with their $99 Prime membership. To play Prime video there is a minimum set of requirements that you can read about here. The key is that Amazon wants you to use HTML5 and Safari isn't listed as one of the Browsers that Amazon supports HTML5.

I'm not a huge fan of Plug-ins but Amazon Prime Video also supports Microsoft Silverlight Plug-In. Since Microsoft Silverlight supports the Mac I installed Silverlight and tried again. Of course it failed. After 3 or 4 more attempts I gave up. That was over a year ago. It was only recently that I decided I would give it another try. Low and behold it now works!

In order to use Safari to play back Amazon videos the first thing you need to do is download and install the latest copy of Silverlight.

Once Silverlight is installed Open up Safari and navigate to the Amazon Prime website then open Safari Preferences.

Once the Preferences window is displayed open the Security tab and make sure "internet plug-ins:" is checked then click the "Plug-in Settings" Button.

Make sure that "Silverlight" has a check in it's check-box and that the Amazon entry shows "Allow" is from the pull down menu.

Click "Done" at the bottom of the window and everything should be fine. On one of my Macs I had to restart Safari to get streaming to work so if things don't work give that a try.

Now you can binge watch till your hearts content! Oh, BTW Amazon, can you please get to work and please provide an AppleTV app? Maybe your viewership would increase.

Power User Tips & Shortcuts

2016-01-04T13:06:00.002-08:00

Even though I have a blog I don't really consider myself a power user. There are some people out there who can do amazing things from the keyboard and seemingly never touch their mouse. There are others who seem to never touch their keyboard but trigger shortcuts and autofill using nothing but mouse clicks with minimal keyboard input. Using, or not using, a keyboard doesn't make you a power user but it does show how much time you spend streamlining your workflow.

To me, being a power user is understanding your own workflow and developing a strategy to smooth it out and speed it up. No radioactive spider bites, lightning bolts to your chemistry set or urge to avenge your dead parents required.

So here's a few of my favorite tips that will help you on your way to becoming a power user. Or at least speed things up in your everyday Mac-Life.

Copy path to a file

Do you use the UNIX command line or sometimes just need to include the full path in an email to someone? If so then this tip can come in handy. Rather than type it out you can copy the full path using the finder. Just open a Finder window use a "Right-Click" and hold down the "Option Key". The following drop down menu will show up.

Just select the "Copy 'filename' as Pathname" and paste it.

Multiple Tabs in Finder Windows

This next one surprised me. I'm not sure when Apple added this in (I think it was Mavericks but I'm not sure) but the finder now supports multiple tabs just like Safari.

Open a Finder window the hit the familiar "Command+T" key command that every modern browser uses and you will have a second tab in the same window.

This can really clean up your desktop and make your screen feel a lot larger. You can even drag a file from one tab to the next to copy or move files.

System Prefs - Extensions

This next item is a great add-on that came with OS X Yosemite. Basically Extensions allow Apple and third party software companies to add functionality to the Finder and specific applications.

Open up System preferences and select "Extensions"

The left hand column is a listing of the available extension categories;

All - See all extensions you installed on your Mac. These are extensions created by third-party developers. If the extension is a content extension that enables extra functionality in apps, you see an Actions checkbox below the extension. If it’s a Finder extension, you see a Finder checkbox. Select the checkbox to enable the extension.

Actions - See all content extensions installed on your Mac. Select a content extension to make it available in apps. For example, if Markup is selected, you can draw on pictures and sign documents in Mail, TextEdit, and other apps.

Finder - See all Finder extensions installed on your Mac. Select a Finder extension to make it available in the Finder.

To put it in simple terms, Finder extensions add finder functionality for the listed application. In the case of Dropbox it visually shows the upload status with a green check or blue uploading icon.

Other applications behave in a similar fashion showing status or giving you options. Bitcasa's extension allows you to share files with a right click

Photos - With OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Photos now lets you apply third-party image editing extensions within the application. If your third party application supports it you can enable access to that application within Apple Photos by selecting it.

Here's a view of Apple Photos showing the add-on extensions when you use edit.

Share - Select the items that you want in the Share Menu, and in the Social Widget in the Today View in the notification center.

The Share menu is available in several apps, including Safari, Contacts, and the Finder. If an item is selected, but you don’t see it in an app’s Share menu, then you can’t use that item to share in that particular app.
Only items that allow posting or messaging can appear in the Social widget.

Extensions are a great add-on to OS X and remind me of the old OS7, 8 & 9 days of system extensions. It's a great way to add functionality to your Mac, improve your workflow and add to your growing Power User skills.

UPS Battery Backup - Get one!

2015-11-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

I live in a nice suburb of Seattle in a neighborhood that's not too old. You would think the utility infrastructure would be able to handle a storm or two without a power outage. Unfortunately that's not the case. That's why I bought an Uninterruptible Power System (UPS) system. If you value your computer you may want one too.

For computers & electronics, the sudden loss of power or power surges can cause a lot of damage. If you have a cheap power strip you may be protected from electrical surges, but they offer no protection against drops in line voltage, brownouts, blackouts, and other power supply issues. A true UPS system will protect your system from surges as well as these other issues.

My home has experienced several major outages and one very bad voltage surge. When the surge happened it burned out a lot of electronics before my breakers tripped. I lost a lot of electronics that I never thought of protecting: Garage door openers, sprinkler control box, oven electronics, etc. But I did protect my computers so thankfully those came through unscathed. The sad part is that even though my computers were safe my data wasn't so lucky. The sudden shutdown corrupted my HD. Call me a one trial learner. That next week I purchased a UPS system.

There are a lot of sites out there to help you decide what to buy but basically it comes down to -

How much capacity do you need?

How much runtime do you need/want when the power is out?

Should you buy a pure sine wave UPS?

How many devices should you include on your device?

I won't bore you with how to calculate your max power or Amp-Hour requirements. There are plenty of sites that will help. I will briefly touch on the Sine Wave issue ... Make sure your UPS has it.

This site covers the details well but modern electronics need clean sinusoidal power to work. A simple square wave approximation may not be enough.

So once you have your UPS sized, picked out, ordered and unpacked what do you do? Well, first you plug it in and attach all your devices. The batteries will charge up quickly and you are ready to go. But there is one last step. Using OS X to control what to do when the power goes out.

OSX has a nice feature in the System Preferences that automatically shows up when you attach a USB cable from your Mac to your UPS. After connecting your UPS system via USB open System Preferences and go to "Energy Saver." You should now see a new tab titled "UPS"

Select the "Shutdown Options" to configure what to do in the event of a power outage.

Set the options the way you want them and select "Done". Now you are protected! In the event of a power outage your Mac will control all the peripherals attached to the UPS and shut down using the parameters you set. However some other smart devices can also control your UPS systems. In some cases you may want a NAS or other device to decide on your shutdown options.

Here's a Synology NAS control panel option that shows it's UPS configuration set up.

Whatever device you use to control your UPS make sure you set it up so you are fully protected. A good UPS for a home computer set up will cost anywhere from $80-$250. It's cheap insurance to have to protect your computer. Computers cost money but can be replaced in most cases it's your data irreplaceable so protect it!

Slow Mac - What's going on?

2015-10-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

Recently I've had two instances where my Mac just wouldn't respond. It was frozen. I clicked links and typed commands, but nothing would work. Since I run a great application called iStat Menus I could tell my CPU was running at maximum and I didn't have any resources left to do what I wanted. So how do you figure out what's going on and what do you do? Good question! I'm glad you asked.

Apple provides a great application called Activity Monitor. If you have never used it, it's located in the utilities folder. It will show you all of your open applications and running process, how much CPU they are using, the amount of RAM being consumed, energy used as well as disk and network activity.

In my case I found that a process called "storeassetd" was using 99% of my CPU. A lot of digging around the Internet finally revealed that this process is associated with the Apple Mac App store. looking at it, I guess the name makes sense. Somehow, when I was updating my Mac applications, the App store process didn't stop when I quit the software update.

To fix the problem and stop the runaway activity you just highlight the application and click on the stop sign icon in the upper left.

The second instance of runaway CPU was a little more nefarious. I was being attacked by a hacker.

Again I was investigating why my Mac was running slowly and discovered that this time the responsible process was "opendirectoryd" Being a UNIX admin I knew this was the LDAP login authentication process UNIX uses...WTF? This is where Apple's Console application comes in handy.

Console is the application that allows you to look at all of the log files the Mac keeps. I fired up Console, did a little digging and found this:

Page after page of someone trying to log into my Mac as root. Hundreds of attempts per second!! No wonder my poor Mac was having trouble.

I realized what had happened almost immediately. The previous week I had needed to access my Mac while away from home and had allowed remote login in the System Preferences Sharing configuration menu. Since I have multiple Macs I had also set up my Airport router to forward all ssh requests to my iMac so I could log in to the correct Mac. The fix was just as easy. Shut down the ssh port on my Mac and remove the Airport Port forward using Airport Utility.

The moral of this story is to be vigilant. If you have a problem, if your Mac is running slowly and you don't know why, do a little investigation. It could just be a hung application (like my App Store process) or it could be something much much worse.

iTunes - Where is that Song?

2015-10-07T10:05:00.001-07:00

I recently posted about some of the annoyances of iTunes. Today I want to follow up with another point of frustration: How to search for a song and figure out which of your playlists it's in.

One of the great things about iTunes is creating the perfect playlist. And if you have a lot of playlists in your music collection it can be hard to remember which is which. My wife was trying to find a playlist and could only remember that it had this one specific song in it. So she did what all of us do and searched for the song. ... No dice.

She poking and prodding she turned to me and said "This is horrible! Why can't they make it simple to list out all the playlists that have a specific song in it?" We tried asking Siri and she just got confused. The answer is a keystroke away.

Bring up iTunes, select your music library and search for a song.

Hold down the "Control" key and click on the song. Near the bottom of the list you should see "Show in Playlist." Click on it and it will show you all the playlists your selected song is in.

If "Show in Playlist" isn't visible it just means that song is not a part of any playlist. Who know searching could be so easy?

Let me know some of your iTunes gripes in the comments below. Who knows? Maybe there's a simple solution.

iTunes Annoyances - Let Me Count the Ways

2015-10-01T14:09:00.003-07:00

iTunes started life as a great little app to play music. Over the years it has grown to gargantuan proportions and handles all of Apple's media as well as acting as a portal to the iTunes store. To me iTunes is bloated, over weight and needs a diet. Since that's not going to happen for a while I've decided to address some small but niggling issues and maybe help someone keep from pulling their hair out. Today I want to address a problem that plagued me when I started using iOS 9 on my new iPhone 6s.

I work out to music and I suddenly ran into a problem with playlists. The first song repeated over and over. I could not get the next song to play. Hitting the couple arrow icon just started the song over again.

First I wanted to see what my playlist had "Next Up" so I hit the three lines to the right of the play icon.

It showed me nothing but endless repeats of the same song.

The solution is as simple to fix as the problem is to cause. When playing music the main screen has a to "arrow" icons at the bottom of the screen. One for "Shuffle" and the other for "Repeat." Can you see the almost too small to read numeral "1" on the "Repeat" icon below? That means the selected song will play over and over and over... until you are sick of it or change the settings.

To stop this aural assault you just tap the same icon until the little "1" & the grey box around it goes away. BTW - The grey box is a visual signal that this function is selected. In this case if you select the "repeat" arrows and only tap once the grey box will be shown but no number. This means the playlist will repeat. Tap again, and the number 1 will appear and that song will repeat. I figure since the Home button on my iPhone is so close to the repeat icon in iTunes I inadvertently selected it without knowing it.

Over the years Apple has tried to improve iTunes but it's still filled with small buttons which I am clueless to explain. If there were only one or two unknown buttons it wouldn't be so bad but every update of iOS or iTunes brings more changes and more new icons. If you add in the new Music service, old Playlists, Genius Playlists, Shared libraries and other functions things get confusing in a hurry.

I hope this helps relieve some of the frustration out there. Write a comment and tell me your frustrations with iTunes. I'll listen, and just maybe, Apple will too.

Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan - Where did my Widgets go?

2015-09-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

El Capitan the new Macintosh OS was released today and there are a lot of things to like. Unfortunately there are also a few annoyances. Today I want to address Widgets.

You remember those don't you? They are the mini-applications that sit on your Dashboard. Apple has a whole page devoted to them here. They first appeared in Mac OS Tiger in 2005. You normally access them when using a key command or gesture (swipe left using 3 fingers). They appear on a secondary desktop.

Well Apple has decided they aren't important and has turned them off by default. If you are a Widget user, however infrequent, you can turn them back on in System preferences. Just open up preferences and navigate to "Mission Control"

Make sure "Dashboard" Is turned back on. I am used to having all my widgets on a separate space so that's the pick I made. Close up Preferences and you will have your Widgets back.

Based on this change I can only suspect that Widgets may not be around much longer. But for now, you can have your El Capitan and Widgets too.

iOS - Adding Emergency Information

2015-08-28T10:11:00.003-07:00

Every year iOS is updated with great new features and awesome new programs. I'm sorry to admit I don't always take the time to explore every feature and every new app. Today I want to remind people about an Apple app that came out a while ago, Apple's Health App. Like me you probably moved it to iOS purgatory on the last page of your iPhone applications screen but you may want to take another look.

Most people think you have to have an Apple Watch to use the health app or it's only helpful to track fitness, calories or food, but there is one great use for this application you might not know about, the ability to have personal information handy in case of emergency.

My daughter recently got her drivers license and like every parent I worry about her when she is on the road late at night driving by herself. One small measure of comfort is know that If she were to get in an accident and someone needed her personal information or an emergency contact number, all they would need to do is grab her ever present iPhone (never used while driving of course!) and access the data from the lock screen.

To set things up just open the Apple Health app and select "Medical ID" in the lower right corner. To create a medical ID just select the red "Create Medical ID" text and fill in the data.

Apple has added a lot of basic medical information fields but you can also enter data in the notes section. By default you can add medical conditions, allergies, medications you might be on, blood type as well as other personal information. You can also enter one or more emergency contacts. Make sure you have selected "Show When Locked" before hitting the done button.

Now here's the best part, when your phone is locked and someone needs to access this information they just need to select the "Emergency" button at the bottoms of the lock screen then "Medical ID" on the next screen.

Obviously this is information can save your life in the event of an accident but it's also extremely helpful if you loose your phone. Anyone who finds your phone can find a contact they can call to return your phone to you.

Apple is great at adding little details that make your phone an awesome device to use. Medical ID is a well thought out addition that can literally save your life.

USB Power Outlet - Amazon SALE!

2015-07-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

One of my most popular posts is about a replacement wall outlet that includes 2 USB ports for charging your devices you can read about it here: Fastmac U-Socket USB/Power Outlet.

Since I first published that post way back in 2011 several other companies have come out with similar products. Today I just want to give you a heads up that Amazon is having a sale on the Leviton 15-Amp USB wall outlet with built in USB ports.

My Fastmac USB Outlets are still working great but you can always use more ways to charge your devices. With these outlets you don't have to hunt down your wall wart, you can just grab a cable and plug it in.

At $18.52 for Amazon Prime users, these outlets look like a great deal, go out and order several. They will be shipped same day for free. That's a deal!

Tech Tuesday - Old Technology

2015-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today I've decided to start a less problem based series of posts about technology in general. After thinking about it for a while I decided to call it "Tech Tuesday." The alliteration works for me but I reserve the right to change the name to "Tech Thursday" if I don't meet my deadline. But for today, it's Tech Tuesday.

For my first Tech Tuesday post I'll start with a question: What's the oldest piece of tech you have still laying about?

I have a vast collection of old routers, ancient network Ethernet Switches, printers, cables & miscellaneous old calculators.

I'm an HP RPN guy myself and rarely use my old HP 41C or 32S any more. My iPhone now serves as my go to machine when I need to work some math. If you are like me and find the default apple calculator lacking check out the Apple App store. It has a great collection of calculator emulators and including many HP-like RPN versions. My go to iPhone calculator is Free42. As it's name implies it's free and works well. It may not have all the programing functions of some of the more advanced emulators out there but, it's free. Give it a try.

As for working electronics I think I'm most proud of my old Palm Tungsten T3. It's rugged and well designed for it's day too bad HP had to go and ruin it. At this point it's worth next to nothing so for now I keep it tucked away. Who know's maybe it will be worth something some day.

So how about you? What do you have laying about? Do you still use it every day or even every month? Let me know in the comments.

Apple Photos - How to Stop Autolaunch

2015-06-18T10:07:00.001-07:00

One of my hobbies is photography. I love taking tons of photos and over the years I have developed a workflow involving Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom. I used iPhoto and more recently the new Apple Photos, but not as my main go-to application. Therefore I was quite annoyed when each and every time I plugged in my iPhone or SD card Apple Photos would open. Here's how to shut that off.

Open up Photos and plug in your SD Card or iDevice. Go to the "Import" tab and look at the upper left corner of the window.

All you need to do is uncheck the "Open Photos for this device" box and Photos will not autolaunch when you plug in your device.

The somewhat annoying part is that you will need to do this for each and every device you plug in. But once you have plugged them in and unchecked the box all should be well and Photos won't autolaunch.

BONUS Section

People tend to forget applications they haven't used for a while (or in some cases never even knew existed). Image Capture is one of those applications.

Image Capture has been around a long time and is installed by default in the Applications folder. You can use Image Capture to do all sorts of things including using a scanner, sorting your photos, quick emails or even make a contact sheet. You can also set what you want to happen when you plug in a SD Card or idevice.

Find Image Capture in your applications folder and open it up. Once open look in the lower left corner of the window. You will see almost the same import configuration options as you see in Photos.

If you don't see the import pull down menu (shown in the red circle above) hit the very small arrow box in the lower left corner. That symbol is Apple's universal icon for "There's more stuff here if you hit me!" In this case it toggles the import view on and off. Once open use the pull down menu to set the application or no application to autolaunch.

Using Image Capture also allows you to set the import location or what to do with the photos on import. Just use the "Import To" pull down menu at the bottom center of the window.

As you can see there are a lot of cool options, even build a web page! How easy is that.

If you are a photographer and take even a modest amount of photos, getting rid of small annoyances, saving time and streamlining your work can really pay off. These tips may not make you a better photographer but they definitely help your workflow.

A Little Time Off - TARDIS Style

2015-06-16T16:06:00.002-07:00

I decided to take some time off from blogging a while back but should get back to all things Mac shortly. It wasn't like I didn't have other projects going on though. Since my family loves Dr. Who, I thought I would share the TARDIS nightlight I just finished. Now I just turn it on at night to scare away all the Daleks and Cybermen hiding under my bed.

As a DIY project I'm sure it's been done to death but I figured it was going to be fun and interesting to see what I could do with it.

I started with some plans I drew up and some materials.

Some cutting, more thinking and many trips to the big box hardware store and I finished the basics. (FYI - Big Box hardware stores suck at small parts and accessories. I got almost everything elsewhere.)

Add some glue and the classic outline was done.

I fussed over the details of the call box sign. How do you make the text clear and readable? How do you make 4 signs that all match? Should I make the signs illuminated? A few internet searches later I found a sticker place that will print your own custom made stickers. WOOT!

A little Sharpie action, some pre-stained wood side panels and when all was done I ended up with this.

Several coats of "Tardis Blue" stain, a wash of black to add some depth and I had my nightlight. If I get around to it I'll take some night shots. The top light is clear acrylic that glows. The windows are frosted and covered with blue acetate to give a nice blue illumination. All in all, it works well and it makes me happy. Isn't that what's life is about?

Geek Day Off - 2015 Emerald City Comicon

2015-03-30T10:37:00.003-07:00

All technology all the time isn't healthy. Everyone needs to look up from their screen every once in a while and enjoy life by doing something fun and different. In the past I've blogged about going to the Seattle LEGO Brickcon with the son, I've done some woodworking and I've attended the Seattle Emerald City Comicon. Here's links to my 2013 ECCC and 2014 ECCC posts. This year I went again and it was bigger and better than ever.

So here are some photos from this year's Comicon to help you through another Monday.

Over the past 3 years Comicon has grown. This year it was packed and tickets sold out weeks in advance. When you finally get through all the lines the show floor is huge and filled with artists, artwork and people.

First and foremost ECCC is about comics, the artists that draw them and the artwork they create. There are a lot of booths filled with awesome comic book art and great artists.

There are also shops filled with fun cosplay items as well as everything comic related.

All the cool artwork and kitsch aside, what really makes Comicon fun are the people who attend. Everyone who goes has some passion or inner-geek that they hold in (some more so than others) for 364 days of the year. But on this one day they let their hair down, dress up and have a lot of fun. Some of the costumes are amazing.

This year "Marvel's Agent Peggy Carter" lead actress Haley Attwell was was a guest of ECCC. The show is very popular and dressing up as Peggy was the thing to do. Here are just two of what must have been 200 versions of the character.

People also dressed up as characters from their favorite animated movie or TV Show

Gaston & Harley Quinn

MegaMind and My Little pony

Attendees also dressed up as comic book characters even if they don't have a movie or TV show. Although he may be popular in the Marvel geek community I bet most people have never heard of Sub-Mariner. Marvel is set to milk the cash cow one more time with a Sub-Mariner movie so stand by to learn his back story.

Then there were just tons of characters from past movies and shows.

Here's Barf from Spaceballs as well as Black Widow and Hawkeye from the Marvel movies.

Captain America Dancer

And of course Captian America himself

Here's Lady Thor and her ... friend?

Maleficent!

Character from that never ending movie, Never Ending Story

There was even a visit from a Northwest native and his handler. Glad they finally decided to get out of the forrest attend the Con. Gotta love the ability to wear furry Sasquatch costume inside a heated building.

The Riddler holding Court

I must say that this is the first Snoopy I've seen in the 3 years I've attended.

Wonder Woman! Hey DC Comics, where's HER movie!

I had a great time this year and will be heading back next year. So just like this Storm Trooper, a nice day off is always appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Pixar's Renderman is now Free!

2015-03-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

I fell in love with Pixar long before they made their first movie. In the early to mid 1980's Pixar was owned by Lucasfilm and created a great piece of Mac software called Renderman. Ultimately Pixar was bought by Steve Jobs then sold to Disney but the software continued to shine regardless of who owned it. Renderman software was used in movies like Titanic, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and other Hollywood blockbusters.

By today's standards the early versions of Renderman were a bit crude but it had a lot of power and the results were spectacular, even by today's standards. It was used to make the the Genesis Effect in the 1982 movie Star Trek II.

Although the software runs on most OS's today back then Renderman ran on a Mac I would have bought a copy but it would have been a very expensive toy. Today I just got a notice that the non-Commercial version is now free. Looks like Pixar just made a lot of budding animation directors very happy.

Renderman isn't a simple application. You will need to have a way to create your model files using an application like Autodesk's Maya, Katana or other 3D CAD or meshing application. If you don't already have Maya, you can try a free trial. Maybe you can create your own movie masterpiece like the one below.

So, if you want to try your hand at the next great animated movie go to the Pixar web site and download your copy. If it sounds like too much work, then just head over to YouTube or Vimeo and watch some of the great Pixar Short films like Geri's Game, Day & Night, Paperman & my personal favorite Presto. All of them were rendered using Renderman, a professional quality tool that's now free.

Geek Day Off - The Tardis Box

2015-03-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I posted about my woodworking hobby and how I occasionally let my inner geek loose on some of my designs. Because my daughter now works at a game store and also likes the BBC show Doctor Who I decided to make one additional box; a Tardis card box. I hope you like the results as much as I do!

The color, the addition of the decals really set the tone. It took a while to find the right font and designs for the Tardis signs but my daughter is really happy with the results.