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Ransomware worries? Turn off Find My Mac/Find My iPhone
Note: Here's how to enable 2-step authentication for your Apple ID. It's been a rough day Down Under; several iOS and Mac users have found their devices held "ransom" by a hacker leveraging Apple's Find My iPhone and Find My Mac services. Australia's The Age reports information acquired by recent security breaches, combined with the human tendency to reuse security credentials across services, may have led to the lockouts. The normally-helpful (or at least benign) Find My X services can indeed be used for ill, as Wired's Mat Honan learned last year to his regret. It's noteworthy that iPhone users who have a passcode in place should be able to recover access, as long as the passcode was created outside of setting up Find My iPhone. In this post, I'll explain how to disable Find My iPhone/iPad and Find My Mac, as well as how to create a passcode on your iOS device. First, let's disable those services. Note that you must know your iCloud account information to turn off either of the Find My X services -- that's the point, really, as a thief presumably would not know your password and wouldn't be able to unlock or reinstall your purloined device with FMx turned on. Disable Find My iPhone/iPad This is quite easy to do. Just follow these steps: Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap iCloud. Scroll to the bottom of the list, and move the slider labeled "Find my iPhone" to the Off position. You'll need to authenticate with your iCloud password. That's it. On the Mac, the process is just as simple. Disable Find My Mac Launch System Preferences. Click iCloud. A new pane appears. Scroll to the bottom of the list on the right. De-select Find My Mac. (If you aren't using it, best to uncheck Back to my Mac as well -- if your iCloud password was compromised then BTMM could also be a security risk.) Again, you'll need to authenticate with your iCloud password. Create an iOS passcode Just to be sure that you can unlock your device locally if you do re-enable Find My iPhone, it's a good idea to set a passcode. (If you have an iPhone 5s and you enabled the Touch ID feature, iOS forced you to create a passcode, so you're all set.) These screenshots are for iOS 7, but the iOS 6 process is similar. Open the Settings app. Scroll down to Passcode. If you've never created a passcode before, toggle Turn Passcode On. You'll be prompted for a short (4-digit) numeric "simple passcode" or a longer/complex alphanumeric passcode. Pro tip: Even if your employer or educational institution requires a complex passcode via MDM, you can still access the "quick entry" numeric keypad for your passcode... just create an all-numbers passcode of the minimum length or longer, and you won't have to peck out the unlock code on the full keyboard.) Once your passcode is enabled and verified, you can set the timeouts for passcode access, which apps can be accessed from the lock screen, and more. In general, Apple's recovery/security services like Find My iPhone are a very good thing, and beneficial to have up and running -- as long as you observe reasonable password hygiene with your iCloud credentials, which are the "keys to the kingdom" for iOS app purchases, iTunes music, your iCloud email and iWork online documents... well, you get the idea. But turning off Find My iPhone is a reasonable temporary measure if you're concerned about this kind of hack attack, or worse things that could happen with a compromised iCloud password. Michael Rose contributed to this post.
Dear Aunt TUAW: ZDnet switcher has some wires crossed
Auntie knows that some of her correspondents don't get around to sending in their questions promptly -- in some cases, not at all. This week, she's handed over the perfumed stationery to nephew TJ, who has a bit of a bee in his bonnet over Ken Hess's account of his first week with the Mac, published last week by ZDnet. Dear Ken, After your rather colorful piece about wanting to trade in your iPhone 5 for an iPhone 4, I was curious to read your account of switching to the Mac. The challenges you're facing are surmountable; I believe I may be able to give you a few pointers to make the transition smoother. I went through this exact process about 10 years ago, and I've never looked back. While things may feel easier on Windows, as someone who spent time and has done tech support on both platforms, I think it's fair to say that really depends a lot on what you are used to. For example, when I bought my PowerBook, I hooked the Ethernet cable to it. Then I started searching for the equivalent of Windows' "Network Wizard" to start configuring -- whether or not this was a public network, a home network, or a work network. After several minutes of searching I finally gave up and thought, "Wait, you don't suppose that it's just that easy? I plugged in the network cable and I'm on the network?" But that's how it worked. Click to close ... when it makes sense. You wrote: "[W]hen I click the X on an application, I expect it to exit." At the risk of frustrating you further, some apps on the Mac do close when you close their window, and some don't. For example, if you close the "Contacts.app" window, there is really nothing more for you to do with that app, so the app closes. However, if you are in a word processing or text editor and close the last window, maybe you want to create a new document. If you close the last window of your web browser, maybe you want to go somewhere else. But here's the thing: the way that Windows does it isn't better, necessarily; it's that it's familiar. If you want to quit an app on Mac, just quit the app using the File menu's Quit command, or the handy Command-Q keyboard shortcut. (Yes, you can control the Mac using the keyboard.) Most apps will resume right where you left off, including re-opening windows just like you had them before. If you don't want an app to save its windows, you can even tell it not to. Aside: Force quitting iOS apps You also wrote: "A similar thing happens on the iPad and iPhone. My daughter never quits any apps, so she always has twenty or more 'minimized' apps on her devices. Of course, everyone in my family also makes fun of me because I want them to close the doors when entering or leaving the house. I must be the one that's wrong. I like to close doors and apps. Deal with it." You are, of course, welcome to use your devices however you like. However, your analogy to closing doors when entering or leaving the house doesn't really fit, because background apps on iOS will automatically quit when the OS needs to reclaim the memory they're using. Force-quitting apps on iOS is like standing at one of those automatic doors at the grocery store and pulling it shut behind you. You can do it if you want, but don't expect other shoppers to compliment you for your diligence. When you re-launch an iOS app, it will pick up where you left off, so it appears as if you never quit it at all. (Sounds familiar? Apple is trying to introduce that convenience into Mac OS X too.) Free and Bundled Apps You wrote: "If you haven't noticed, I really like free applications." That was a strange thing to say after mentioning, twice, that one of the first things you installed was Microsoft Office, which is probably the most expensive "app" most Mac users will ever install, unless they decide to spend $20 on Pages instead. Fair warning, Pages isn't filled with oodles of overcrowded toolbars reworked into a 'ribbon' either. In fact, the default look of a new document in Microsoft Word compared to the default look of a new document in Pages.app may be a good illustration of the difference in mindset between the two platforms -- Word first: vs. Pages: That's after Microsoft updated Word with the "ribbon" feature to "simplify" it. Now, is one of those better than the other? No, they're just different approaches. Personally, I prefer Pages because it shows me a small subset of commonly needed features, whereas Microsoft Word looks like a bad case of UI overreach. Let's move on. The next concern you raised was about the perceived lack of bundled apps on OS X: "At the price that Apple charges ($800), you'd think I'd get a free copy of PhotoShop Lite or some other 'lite' versions of something with it but, no, it's pretty bare bones." First, "the price that Apple charges" for its operating system is $20. The rest is for the hardware. Microsoft doesn't bundle third-party apps with its operating system, either -- that's down to the PC manufacturers. Second: Really? You're complaining that Mac OS X doesn't come loaded down with the free applications and utilities commonly derided by Windows users as "crapware?" You may have noticed that there is no Mac version of PC Decrapifier, either. This is generally considered to be a feature of buying a Mac -- not a flaw. Instead, Apple has created the Mac App Store, which is conveniently bundled with OS X and accessible at all times, via the "Apple Menu" as shown here: Fire that up and you will find more apps that you could ever hope to use. Many of them are free, and those that aren't free are generally pretty inexpensive. When you buy from the Mac App Store, you also know that the app developer has met Apple's standards for inclusion in the store, so it won't muck up your computer. (The question of whether those restrictions, particularly the "sandboxing" rules that control which areas of your Mac an app can access, are overly restrictive is a question for another post.) Oh, and there are no license codes for apps from the Mac App Store, and you can use them on all of your Macs. In fact, you can also set it up so that whenever you download an app from the Mac App Store, that newly-purchased app will automatically be downloaded and installed on all of your other Macs. On paying for software I find it disheartening to hear a tech writer claim that he doesn't have any money to spend on software. (Even more so when that tech writer is "a full-time Windows and Linux system administrator with 20 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX, and Windows systems in large multi-data center environments," as your ZDnet bio states. Sysadmin wages are, by and large, better than writer's pay.) I assume that you get paid for your work, and that you pay your mechanic, accountant, and doctor for their work, not to mention either mortgage or rent. I'm not sure how you expect software developers to pay their mortgage or rent or their mechanic, account or doctor if they aren't getting paid for their work. But that's a whole other conversation. Crashing You wrote "Pinta, for example, won't allow me to cut or copy a bit of a drawing. I get an exception when I try. That's a significant fail for that product." Wow. You ran into a bug in a free, cross-platform image program? I'm shöcked. (By the way, we call that a Sarcastic Umlaut.) I'm not sure what this has to do with a review of your purchase of a Mac. "I get some app crashes -- far more than I should for a brand new system. So far, the App Store app has crashed multiple times, Pinta has crashed, and a few others that I can't recall have crashed on me." Seems like you've run into more crashes on your new Mac than I have on all of my Macs in the past 6 months or more. In fact, I purchased that exact same Mac mini about 2 months ago and I'm not sure I've seen any crashes on it, and certainly haven't seen any crashes of apps from Apple. Do third-party apps sometimes crash on Mac OS X? Sure. Do Apple's own apps sometimes crash too? Sure. Does that happen on Windows too? Yup. Desktop Publishing You wrote: "I've always wanted a Mac for Desktop Publishing, for Graphics creation and editing, and for movie editing. All those things are now available for Windows and I'm not convined [sic] that the Mac versions are any better these days. Twenty years ago, they were. Today, not so much." As someone who has used Microsoft Word and Pages extensively, I can tell you that doing consumer-level desktop publishing in Pages is much easier than it is in Word. Have you actually tried any Mac graphics programs? I don't mean "Mac versions of Windows programs" or "free app that tries to work on Windows, Linux, and Mac," I mean actually developed-for-the-Mac applications like Graphic Converter or Pixelmator? Because it sounds like you've tried a bunch of Windows-based or Windows-centric apps on Mac and then declared that a Mac is no better than a Windows machine. That would be like me switching to Windows and complaining that iTunes and Safari aren't any better than on the Mac (which they're not, but it's hardly a fair assessment of the whole platform). The menu bar is better. No, really. It is. You wrote: "That weird application bar thing at the top is application focused." It's called the "menu bar." Not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe it'd be worth taking an hour or two to learn the Mac-specific terminology before declaring yourself ready to write an post for a major tech website dismissing an entire mainstream operating system that you have used for "a full week." [This is a strong real-world example of Michael Chastain's legendary General Motors Help Line joke. "Motor? Engine? I don't want to learn technical terms, I just want to go places in my car!"--Ed.] The menu bar is better. It works consistently across all applications. No longer will you have to blindly click around some application to try to figure out where the menus are. They are at the top. Always. Yes, if you find yourself clicking randomly around the OS (any OS) then you might get unexpected results. The difference is that OS X offers you consistency. In sum ... You started off by saying that you had been using Mac OS X for "a full week." I expected you meant that you were just getting started -- after all, you've been using other operating systems for decades -- but you seem to have already given up. Of course Mac OS X seems strange; it's different from what you are used to! There is still a lot out there to discover, such as the fact that you can get free screen recording built-in using QuickTime X (as pointed out by our own Megan Lavey-Heaton). Is it as good as Camtasia? No, but it's free. And if you want Camtastia, it's available for Mac (for a price), along with Jing and other products from TechSmith at several price points. There's also iShowU and ScreenFlow and probably some others that I'm forgetting. If you're seeking software tools and Google doesn't turn up what you are looking for, there's always Alternative.To. As a new Mac user you might also greatly benefit from checking out AskDifferent, Mac OS X Hints, and our own Mac 101 series. Of course, mainstream social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are good places to seek out help; so are Apple's own support forums. Even the most experienced Mac users were beginners once. Unlike the bad days of the 1990s, however, now you've got a lot of company; reach out, ask for help, get what you need and enjoy. But maybe the first step towards the comfort zone is learning -- and accepting -- that you don't know what you don't know. Anyway, we're here to help. Good luck with week two of your Mac experience... and beyond.
Mac 101: The history of the Command key "pretzel"
You've probably tapped it at least a few times today without ever knowing exactly what it is or what it's called; I'm talking about the strange, swirly square emblazoned on the Command key (that's Unicode U+2318, for the font fanatics). So just what exactly is it, and who decided it would be the symbol for such an important key? The shape itself, which has appeared in different forms for thousands of years in Europe, may have its origins in a heraldic symbol called the Bowen knot. As a glyph, it goes by several different names including the Gorgon loop and Saint John's Arms. The symbol has come to symbolize many things over the past 2,600 years or so, but it didn't become an iconic part of computing culture until 1984. As related by Folklore.org, the story goes that when Steve Jobs first saw the keyboard command list for MacDraw he was unhappy with the number of Apple logos cluttering up the list, as the Apple symbol was used on the keyboard's action key. He demanded that his team find a suitable symbol to replace it. Apple's bitmap artist, Susan Kare, immediately began browsing for a new icon and stumbled upon the familiar symbol, which is used on modern roadside signs in Scandinavia to highlight a point of interest or cultural heritage. She presented the symbol to the team, they squealed with delight, and the Command key as we now know it was born. What's your preferred nickname for the wee squiggle? Let us know in the comments below.
Mac 101: Finding your Mac's UUID
Most Apple owners are familiar with the UDID, aka serial number, for their iOS device, but did you know that your Mac has a similar hardware UUID too? In this post, I will show you where to find it, so you can use it in beta testing. If you ever volunteer to test a beta Mac app, you will likely need to provide the developer with this hardware UUID. This alphanumeric value is used by the developer to provision an Adhoc version of the software specifically for your Mac. Finding your UUID is not too difficult once you figure out where it is located in OS X. To find you UUID, you must start with the Apple icon in the top left corner of your Mac menu bar. Click on the Apple and then select "About This Mac," as shown above. This will pull up the basic details about your Mac hardware, including its processor, memory and startup disk. Click on "More Info..." to view the detailed system information. This system information box provides additional details on your Mac, but you have to dig one step further to find your UUID. Click on "System Report" button, highlighted above in blue, and then "Hardware" at the top of the screen. Look in the right-hand pane and you will find your hardware UUID towards the bottom of the list as shown below. Once you locate the UUID, you can select it and copy it to the clipboard.
Mac 101: How to retire a Mac with an iCloud account
When you want to retire, sell or give away a Mac, you should never just pass it on to someone else as-is. There are many apps that only allow you to use your serial numbers a limited time, most notably from Adobe and Microsoft. You should deactivate the software so that you can reuse your serial numbers on a new Mac. There's other data you should save and remove also. In his article "iCloud services can make decommissioning your Mac more complicated," our good friend David Morgenstern at The Apple Core on ZDNet alerts us to an update to an Apple support article that deals with just that issue. The first critical issue, as noted on The Apple Core, is to not manually delete any of your data while signed into your iCloud account. Your iCloud account stores your files that sync with all of your devices and removing anything while signed in means your other devices will also have that information wiped. The safe steps to take are: Open iTunes and deauthorize the Mac from your iTunes account. Next, Apple recommends you back up your data. The Mac Basics: Time Machine support article, covers how to backup your Mac. You can also use other backup software, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Both programs are used religiously by TUAW staff members. No matter what you use, the point is to make sure you have a copy of all of the data on your computer, so that you experience no surprises when you add a new Macintosh into your hardware mix. Open iCloud from your System Preferences. Uncheck the Find My Mac preference (the last one in the list), and then click the sign out button on the left side of the iCloud preference window. Your system automatically removes all of your iCloud data at this point. If you've backed up your data though, you still have it all neatly stored away on your backup drive. The balance of the information on Apple's support article covers reformatting your hard drive and how to return it to its original "out-of-the-box" state. This is especially useful for the recipient of your old and their new Mac. I recently had a relatively new iMac go belly-up on me and can say that having a current backup is the only thing that saved me from weeks of frustration trying to resurrect files. For my iTunes account, I just had to deauthorize all my machines and reauthorize them one by one. If I had not activated my iCloud account, I would have lost all my contacts, calendars and years of carefully organized Safari bookmarks. In addition, I found that Microsoft's phone support and Adobe's chat support were most helpful in returning my lost activations for their software. TUAW Stories Related to Backing Up Your Data Getting ready for Mountain Lion: Backups World Backup Day 2013: Don't be an April Fool!
Mac 101: Upgrade to SSD
If you are looking for a way to get more out of your MacBook or MacBook Pro, consider a solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs offer faster data read and write speeds, fast file transfers, speedier boot times and will save you some battery life. In the past, SSDs were considered somewhat pricey upgrades and out of reach for many users. Today, prices are dropping and quality drives can be had for a song through retailers like Amazon and OWC. Today I will show you how to install an SSD, specifically the Samsung 840 series into a June 2012 MacBook Pro. The proceedure in this tutorial video will work for any SATA-based Mac notebook with a few monior adjustments to the physical installation of the disc. Keys to Success Remember: before doing a full hard-disc transplant, make a full backup of your computer. Rather than restoring from a backup to a new drive, I used Carbon Copy Cloner and a Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter to clone my internal drive's contents before installing the new SSD. If you don't have a Seagate Backup Plus drive you can pick up a universal drive dock or Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit for about US$30. They're nice to have around anyway. This whole upgrade process is super easy and you should be able to complete it in a few hours depending on how much data you need to transfer. Now go forth and do yourself a solid. Disclaimer: Note that opening a new MacBook Pro won't void your warranty, but replacing stock parts with your own third-party parts will void the standard Apple warranty.
Mac 101: Beef up your spam filters in Mail (video)
Nobody likes spam, but if you use Apple's Mail on Mountain Lion, at least you have some tools to deal with it. Plenty of Mac users rely on Mail to read, manage and process their emails... and spam messages. If you use email, you have spam -- that's just the way it works. Following up on Kelly's how-to from a few months back, let's take a look at some ways to manage spam efficiently and decrease your email processing time. Built-in Spam Filtering Mail's built-in spam filtering is enabled by default. You'll find it in the Junk Mail setting in Preferences. Make sure that the box labeled "Enable junk mail filtering" is selected. You can also determine where spam messages go after detection, or add exemptions to your filter. [Note that some online mail services -- Gmail in particular -- recommend disabling Mail's onboard spam filtering. Be sure to check the setup instructions for your service provider. --Ed.] In the Viewing preferences tab, disable "Display remote images in HTML messages." Some spammers send out messages with web bugs -- invisible images linked to the specific message you received -- that notify the spammer that your email is an active email account once you click on the message. From the spammer's perspective, this "validates" you as a real, live address, which then generates more spam for you. Not good. Turning off this feature prevents the spammer from recognizing your email as an active email account. Creating Rules Mail lets you create rules to fine-tune your spam filtering. One helpful method is to create a new mailbox for messages that meet your spam criteria. Once your new mailbox is created and properly labeled (i.e., "Spam-ish"), go to the Rules setting under Preferences and create specific actions based on a predetermined set of criteria. For example: If all the Content-Type Contains 'multipart/related' then Move Message to [the mailbox you just created]. Now that you've set that rule, messages that meet your criteria are moved to that mailbox. Fine-Tuning No spam filter is completely foolproof, so you will get false positives and false negatives. Mail allows you to select a message and click on "Not Junk" or "Load Image" which will correct the labeling of the message. The more times you correct these errors, the better Mail gets at reducing them. A good rule of thumb is to review your Junk Mail folder periodically to make sure valid messages haven't slipped through the cracks. Cloud Mail If you're not using Mail on your Mac, you still have options in the cloud. An iCloud or Gmail account can act as a buffer between malicious spam and your computer. In some cases, the cloud service filters may be a bit too aggressive; if you suspect some of your inbound mail is being blocked incorrectly, be sure to check the support page for your provider and test with another account. Third-Party Spam Utilities Several third-party spam utilities are available to further enhance your spam-squashing powers, including SpamSieve from C-Command Software. It's been around for quite a while and works very well. A single license will cost you US$30; a free trial is also available. SaneBox is an online application which helps to sort your email into proper boxes and reduces your email processing time. An added feature is that it runs through spam amazingly well. The Smart filtering feature of SaneBox reads your email messages, determines the level of importance and moves unimportant messages out of the inbox. The @SaneBlackHole will not only delete your spam messages but makes sure you never receive email from the sender again and automatically unsubscribes you from the mailing list. You can also defer processing your email by placing your email in the "@SaneTomorrow" or "@SaneNextWeek" folder and it will automatically pop back into your inbox when the time comes. The cost for SaneBox is US$5/month but if you refer other people you'll receive extra credits. The free Mailstrom.co service also can help you reduce spam along with unwanted subscriptions, newsletters and so forth. Mailstrom groups your email by big-picture criteria (sender, subject, size, etc.) and lets you archive or delete in bulk with a single click. For catalog emails or newsletters, you can also unsubscribe in only a few steps, rather than having to track down and confirm individual unsubscribe requests. By using these techniques, hopefully the only place you will see spam is in your musubi.
Mac 101: Checking your Mac's warranty status
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Every newly purchased Mac comes with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support from Apple. Of course, by purchasing AppleCare with your new Mac, you can extend this warranty and telephone technical support to three years, but it will cost you extra. How do you find out if your Mac is still in its first year of warranty or covered by AppleCare for an additional two years? Simple! Go to Apple's Service and Support Coverage page and enter your Mac's serial number. You'll get a break down of your warranty based on the date your Mac was purchased. Where do you find your Mac's serial number? You'll find it in About This Mac (here's how). Or for an even easier way -- because remembering and grabbing your Mac's serial number can be a bother -- download WozWas's Mac Warranty Status Script, which grabs your Mac's serial number and enters it into Apple's Service and Support Coverage page for you. All with one simple click. Knowing whether your Mac is in warranty can be really helpful, should something go wrong. It's also particularly useful to know the status of a Mac's warranty if you're planning on buying second-hand. Remember, warranty and AppleCare coverage stays with a Mac until it expires. There are different views on whether AppleCare is worth the cost, but regardless, a general rule of thumb is that if you can afford it, you should get it. Though Macs are great, if / when something goes wrong, it can be expensive to repair. AppleCare provides you with peace of mind and first-rate support from Apple.
Mac 101: How to back up your Google Reader account
Google is sunsetting its Reader service in July and you may be on the hunt for a new RSS service and client to use. Before you fire up that new client, you should take a few minutes to back up your current Google Reader feeds as you may need to import them into your new app. Importing your feeds will be a lot faster than manually re-subscribing to each one. It's also a good idea to have a copy stored locally as a backup. Here's what you need to do to pull your feeds down from Google Reader: 1. Login to your Google Reader account and click on the gear on the right-hand side of your web browser. Select "Reader Settings" from the drop-down menu. 2. Click on the Import/Export tab in the Google Settings page. Here you will find a link to "Download your data through Takeout." 3. Click on the link to "Download your data through Takeout" and you will be brought to Google's Takeout service. Login again to your Google account, if needed. 4. Make sure the "Choose Services" button at the top of Takeout is selected and Google Reader is noted in the box on the center of the screen. Click on the "Create Archive" button at the bottom to create a backup of your Google Reader account. 5. You will then jump to the download screen where you will see the progress of your backup. My backup was small so it was already completed by the time the page opened. The files for your Google Reader account will be bundled into a zip file and can be downloaded to your computer. 6. Click on the download button to start transferring the Google Reader files to your computer. I use the default download settings in my browser, so my zip file was saved to the "Downloads" folder on my Mac. Depending on your settings, your file may be saved to a different location. You may also be prompted to open the file with the archive utility or save it to your drive. I recommend saving the file directly to the drive. If you download the file and forget where it was saved, you can locate it by opening the "Downloads" window in your web browser or clicking on the Downloads icon in your OS X Dock. 7. Locate the downloaded zip file on your Mac using Finder and double-click on it to extract the files to their own folder. The Reader folder will contain a handful of .json files and a subscriptions.xml file. You can ignore (but not delete) the .json files. 8. Open your new RSS client and use it to import the subscriptions.xml file that you just downloaded and extracted. Please note that this backup contains your RSS feeds and folders (subscriptions.xml) as well as your starred articles (liked.json), shared articles (shared.json) and more. Though stored in the backup, these starred and shared articles are not always transferred into other apps.
Mac 101: Schedule event details in the event title with Calendar
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Let's say you've just got off the phone with a friend. You've arranged to meet later for coffee, but you don't want to forget, so you go to Calendar on your Mac to schedule the event. You double click the date you're going to meet, enter a title, like "Meet Martin for Coffee" and hit return. The event has been created, but all the details still need to be populated. So you double click the event again, to open it and enter further details, like time, location, etc. Or do you? With the Calendar app in Mac OS X, you can schedule event details in the event title. The Calendar app will intuitively read those details and populate the appropriate sections. For example, let's say you're meeting Bob Jones for breakfast tomorrow at 8 AM at 23 Commercial Street. Simply enter "Breakfast with Bob 8 AM 23 Commercial Street" in the event title and Calendar will populate the time and location for you. Unfortunately, you can't schedule alert or note details like this, but this neat trick is really helpful for quick and snappy Calendar entries. This tip works for most computerized calendars out there (including web-based ones like Google's Calendar), but I'm always surprised at just how many people don't know they can do it.
Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users. Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. Too often I've spent a frustrating amount of time putting text back into a coherent order after copying it from a PDF, while wondering why there isn't a simpler way of doing this on my Mac. Thankfully, a friend (who discovered how to from MacWorld) showed me, using Automator. And provided the text in the PDF is formatted correctly (and you're not trying to extract text that is actually an image), it's foolproof as well as free! Here's how. On your Mac, open Automator from Applications. Automator will ask you to select a type for your document. Select Workflow, then hit return. In the far-left column of Automator, click on Files and Folders. In the second column, select Ask for Finder Items and drag and drop it into the far-right space which reads "Drag actions or files here to build your workflow." This becomes your first action. Now click on PDFs in the far-left column and select Extract PDF Text from the second column. Drag and drop Extract PDF Text into the space to the right, where you dragged Find Files and Folders. You'll now see that Automator has created a workflow or one action following another. You're almost there. In the Extract PDF Text bubble of the workflow, select Rich Text instead of Plain Text (next to Output -- this will retain formatting like italics and bold) and choose where you want Automator to place your extracted text files from Save Output To. To finish, simply title and save, but make sure you've save as an application and not a workflow. Now open your new Automator application and select the PDF you want to grab the text from. A new Rich Text document will be created. From there, simply open this document and copy and paste the text into your preferred word processor.
iTunes 101: Making playlists in iTunes 11
If you've messed around with iTunes 11 in default view, you'll notice that creating a playlist has changed. If you have the sidebar turned on to make iTunes 11 look like earlier versions, creating a playlist is much the same as it was. But, if you have the sidebar turned off, Apple's Inside iTunes blog points out that there's a new dedicated area of iTunes just for making playlists. To take advantage of playlist creation 2.0, turn off your sidebar if you have it on (Option+Command+S or View>Hide Sidebar). Along the top bar of iTunes, you'll see a new playlists button. Click this. You'll move into a dedicated playlist window with your playlists on the left. Create a new one by clicking the add button (the plus sign) on the bottom left. You can choose from a basic playlist, a smart playlist or playlist folders. If you want to edit an existing playlist, click on the gear icon next to it. Here, you have options to edit, duplicate, delete, export or burn a playist to a disc. If you want to create or edit a playlist, select that option and the playlist being worked on will slide to the right of the screen. Your library will now be on the left. Drag items onto the playlist, and name the playlist so you know what you're working on. You can toggle between songs, albums, artists and genre without being kicked out of the playlist view. Once you select videos, you'll go back to normal iTunes.
Mac 101: dealing with iCloud email spam
Dealing with an email inbox filled with spam can be a tedious process. Some spam emails, like those saying you have an inheritance overseas, are easy to spot, while others are cleverly crafted to appear legitimate. If you use an iCloud email account, here are some tips to help you curb your incoming spam. Avoid opening obvious spam emails First and foremost, you should not open an email that you recognize as being spam. Sometimes, the act of opening an email will alert the sender that the email has been viewed by the recipient. If the spammer knows that he has a fresh set of eyes, he will send even more spam your way. Enable junk mail filtering The Mail client built into OS X Mountain Lion has a Junk Mail filtering option that you should enable, especially if you get a lot of spam. You can access the settings by opening Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail (icon) and selecting "Enable junk mail filtering." The default settings should capture most of your spam, but you can tweak the settings if you want more control over you junk mailbox. If you enable the Junk Mail option, make sure you take the time to mark messages as junk mail. Every time you mark an email as junk, the entry is added to the junk mail database and the next message from this sender will be pushed into your junk mail folder. Over time, the amount of spam hitting your inbox will gradually drop. Manage your junk mail folder Apple's mail server is good at filtering spam, but it is not perfect. You can improve its filtering by marking inbox spam as junk. You can either Choose "Mark as Junk Mail" from the Action pop-up menu at the top of the window if you are using iCloud email in a web browser. You can also manually drag an email and drop it in the junk folder. All email messages in the junk folder are flagged as spam and stay in this folder for 30 days. After 30 days, they are deleted. It's a good habit to remember to check this folder on a regular basis. Sometimes, important emails are accidentally identified as spam and routed to this folder. Select a message, then click the Not Junk button to move this and subsequent emails from that sender to your inbox. Disable automatic image loading Besides not opening suspicious emails, you should also disable automatic image loading in emails. I know that it's great to be able to view your cousin's cute cat pictures as soon as you click on an email, but some spammers will use this automatic image loading feature to determine whether an email account is active. You can turn off images in the OS X Mail app by selecting Mail > Preferences > Viewing (icon) and deselecting "Display remote images in HTML messages." Don't worry, this won't strip the images from your incoming emails. You will just have to manually choose to load the images instead. Use an alias email address Signing up for a new online service or joining a new online mailing list is another surefire way to get additional spam. To keep your primary iCloud email in pristine condition, you should use your primary account to email only your close friends and create an alias email account for all your online ventures. Users are allowed to create three email aliases per iCloud account. To create an alias, you should open the web-based version of iCloud email by logging in to iCloud.com. Open iCloud email and click on the gear-shaped Action pop-up menu in the top-right corner of the window. Click on Accounts to open the account management console and then select "Add an Alias." You will have to create a new iCloud email address that includes between three and 20 characters. You can also add in your full name, assign a label color and add a description like "online shopping" for this alias. Once you create a alias, you can send and receive email from the account. You can also disable it when you don't want to use it for a while and turn it back on when you do. When an alias is disabled, all incoming email is returned to sender. You can also delete an alias, but deleting an alias is permanent. If you think you may use the alias again, you should simply turn it off.
Mac 101: Use Finder's item arrangement to sort your files
One of the really neat things about OS X is that it's easy to sort your files in Finder. If you're downloading a lot of files, there are several ways to corral them by using the item arrangement (the button that looks like it has a lot of tiny boxes in it). Here's how to use it.: Name: Sorts by name. Kind: This tells you in generic terms the different types of files in your folder, such as PDF documents, images, etc. Application: This will tell you what default application will open a specific file. Date Last Opened, Date Added, Date Modified, Date Created: Does what it says on the tin. These options will sort your files according to when you last accessed them, added them to your system, modified or created them. Date Created is especially useful for when you remember when you started a project but not when you last worked on it, and Date Added is good for when you have to sort through a lot of downloads and you're looking for one you downloaded on a certain date. Size: This will group your files into batches depending on file size. It's good for figuring out what files are taking up a lot of room on your hard drive, which is especially useful for the smaller-capacity MacBook Air. Label: This sorts by color label. You can add and remove labels by right-clicking the files and selecting a color under labels.
Mac 101: Mountain Lion's Magic Trackpad triple-finger tap dictionary lookup
Let's say you're reading TUAW and you see that I've used the word "peripatetic" in a post. While some of you would know the meaning of the word, others might be doing a bit of head-scratching and fire up the Dictionary app on your Mac. If you have a MacBook with a multi-touch trackpad or a desktop Mac with a Magic Trackpad, and if you run OS X Mountain Lion on your Mac, you can easily look up words with a simple gesture. In whatever you happen to be looking at on your Mac, simply use three fingers to tap on the word that's causing you confusion. The word is highlighted in yellow, and a small popup shows you dictionary, thesaurus and Wikipedia entries that pertain to it. Sadly, this doesn't work with the Magic Mouse... It's a fast way to look up words without missing a beat, so give that perplexing word a triple-finger tap the next time you're flummoxed or befuddled.
Mac 101: Deduplicating your birthdays in the Facebook era
More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Adding Facebook integration to the OS X Contacts application was not without controversy; many of us feared an onslaught of @facebook.com email addresses polluting our pristine data. Assuming you can get past that hurdle, however, you may be faced with another annoyance: duplicate birthdays all up in your Calendar. Here's why they're there, and how to clear them up. The birthday listings that appear in OS X's Calendar app under the Birthdays calendar seem like ordinary events, the kind you should be able to edit and delete with impunity. Thing is, they aren't. The Calendar app is just putting a friendly face on the real source of the birthday information: your contact data. For every person in your Contacts app with a valid birthday bit of data, you'll see a corresponding Calendars item for that friend (or foe). While you can manually enter birthdays for your contacts (or strip them all at once using the Birthday Remover iOS app, for the misanthropes), most of us don't have hundreds of birthdays already listed in our Contacts data (although if you ever imported your Facebook contacts via another method, you might have quite a few). Facebook profiles and birthdays, though? That's another kettle of friends. Many of your Facebook contacts probably have their birthdays in their profiles; certainly most of mine do. One might think that turning on Facebook contact sync would simply match up the Facebook friends with people already in your contact listings, especially if those same-named folks happen to share a birthday. What are the odds? Sadly, it doesn't work that way; it's up to you to remove the duplicated data and match up the contacts to get things nice and clean. Short of turning off Facebook's contact sync in OS X, this is the most straightforward way to deal with it. Important safety note: the procedure described below will remove birthday data from your local contacts. Please back up both your contacts and calendar data beforehand. If at some later date you turn off Facebook sync, or your friends leave Facebook altogether or stop sharing their birthdays, you will no longer see the dates in either your Contacts or Calendar views. For the majority of your Facebook friends, you may not care about this risk, but I do not recommend removing the birthdays of immediate family, spouses etc. Live with those dupes. It's better that way. It's easy to see duplicated birthdays in Calendar; they show up at the top of the week view in the all-day events area. Here's my double record for the irrepressible Gedeon Maheux of the Iconfactory. Double-clicking one of these gets me to the detail view for the birthday: Note the lack of any editing options. That's because the real data lives over in Contacts, so I'll click the Open in Contacts hyperlink. Of course, since I have both a Facebook and a conventional contact for Ged, in my All Contacts list he shows up twice. That's deeply annoying -- and easy to fix. The trick is to select both contacts in the list, then choose Link Selected Cards (Cmd-shift-\) from the Card menu. In the event that there's duplicates in the local contacts plus a third Facebook contact, I select all three (or more) and the menu item changes to "Merge and Link" as seen here. Now that I'm dealing with a unified view of the two different flavors of the contact, I click the Edit button at the bottom of the contact detail. Here's the view of the two birthday listings -- one local, one Facebook. I can't delete the Facebook data; in fact, I can't suppress or hide any of the Facebook contact info without totally disabling Facebook contact sync. (This is annoying.) So my only good option is to actually remove my local record for Ged's birthday by clicking the delete button next to that line. Aggravating, but not as aggravating as double birthdays for everyone. So that's what I'll do. Once the contacts are linked, it's possible I may still want to get to the individual instances to make adjustments or changes. Look at the bottom of the detail where it says Cards and two gray line items; those are actually clickable, not that you'd know it. Clicking one of them will bring up a sub-detail pane that shows only the info from that record. Finally, if you truly want to avoid any notifications for all those birthdays, you can achieve that (while still seeing them in Calendar) by right-clicking the Birthdays calendar, choosing Get Info, and checking the Ignore Alerts box. Happy birthday to all!
Mac 101: Safari bookmark shortcuts
Once you memorize the patterns, keyboard shortcuts can be huge time savers. Some easy-to-remember keystrokes are available in Safari and give you quick access to your bookmarked URLs. In this Mac 101, we will show you how to organize your bookmarks bar and use the keyboard shortcuts to maximize your workflow. Before you can start using these bookmark shortcuts, you need to spend some time organizing and tidying up your bookmarks bar. You will have to launch Safari, click on "Bookmarks" in the menu bar and then select "Show All Bookmarks." Alternatively, you can type control-option and B. You should see the bookmarks window as shown below. Once Safari opens the bookmarks window, you can click on "Bookmarks Bar" on the left to view your available bookmarks and bookmark folders. Make sure you select "Bookmarks Bar" and not the "Bookmarks Menu," as these shortcuts only work with entries in the bookmarks bar. In general, you use the bookmarks bar for frequently used URLs and the bookmarks menu for seldom used ones. You can remove, rename and reorganize all your bookmarks from this interface. Organizing your bookmarks bar is important as you need individual bookmarks that are not enclosed in folders for the keyboard shortcuts to work. You can move a bookmark in the bookmarks bar by dragging and dropping it into its spot. You should arrange the bookmarks in the order that you want to remember them. In the screenshot above, I placed TUAW at the top because I use that URL the most throughout the day. When organizing your list, keep in mind that the shortcuts correspond to the order in which the bookmarks are organized. As shown below, TUAW is at the top and uses "1" in the shortcut, CNET is second and uses "2", and so on. Though you can have a bunch of bookmarks, only the first nine will work with the shortcuts. Once your bookmarks are organized, you can use the simple keyboard shortcut of command-number to open the associated bookmark. In my example, command-1 opens TUAW, command-2 opens CNET, command-3 opens Apple and so on. You can have 9 bookmarks that are accessible by merely typing command-1 to command-9.
Mac 101: Restricting Web Access
TUAW reader Adam wrote in with the following question: Today, I am in the process of upgrading our iMac for another product, likely a MacBook Pro with external display this time. I am wrestling with the idea of putting the old iMac in my daughter's study area for use. My question is this: Is there a way for me to select the websites that she 'can' access? This is different to using a 'net nanny' filter where I can choose sites to block. I wish to ideally, set up two user accounts for her. One account with access to all the educational information and learning sites only, with a second account (for outside of study hours) where she can web-cam with friends/family and other social or fun site access. Can this be done somehow/somewhere? I'm OK if it requires purchase of separate (reasonably priced) software, but cannot locate a solution for this dilemma. I, and my gorgeous daughter, would love a reply on this one! Dear Adam: Good news! Not only is this possible, but it is free and built right into Mac OS X. I'll walk you through the steps. First, launch System Preferences.app either by going to the Apple menu or by finding the /Applications/ folder in Finder. Open the "Users & Groups" preference pane and you'll see something like this: Click that + button at the bottom left (make sure that the "padlock" icon is unlocked first.) Now you will see a "New Account" window. Choose "Managed with Parental Controls" as shown here: (Since I don't know your daughter, I chose a familiar "little sister" name for her.) Once you click "Create User" that window will go away, and you will see one like this: Click the button for "Open Parental Controls" as shown, and you will see Select the radio button next to "Allow access to only these websites" and then use the "+" and "-" buttons to add or remove sites. Mac OS X manages access to these sites by setting up a local proxy and sending all traffic through it, which means that the same restrictions are in place regardless of which app is used, even the Terminal. While I wouldn't assume that any system is foolproof, this should prevent any accidental viewing of undesirable websites. You can manage other settings using the Parental Controls pane in System Preferences.app. Apple has video tutorials on this an other subjects available at https://www.apple.com/findouthow/.
Mac 101: Use Image Capture to clear off old iPhone pictures
Last year, Macworld posted an update of an old trick from blogger Colin Devroe, which allows you to use your Mac to selectively remove photos from an iPhone or iPad without having to sync the device or download images. To do this, just launch Image Capture. Image Capture sees your iPhone or iPad as a camera, just like iPhoto does. Unlike iPhoto, though, it doesn't make you import the images to your hard drive before you can delete them. To delete images off your iPhone, either select all of or do command-click to choose the ones you want to remove. Delete by hitting the red "no" button next to the import location on the bottom menu bar. You can use Image Capture to upload iPhone photos to a different location. Say you've captured screenshots and want them in a certain folder on your external drive and not in iPhoto. You can do that using Image Capture. Image Capture also provides in-depth data about your images, including date and time, location, aperture, focal length, shutter speed, ISO, location and if the flash was used. It's the sort of data you'll find when looking at the file in iPhoto, Aperture or another photo-management software, but it's still neat to see this at a glance.
Mac 101: Battery not charging? Recalibration may be the answer
If your MacBook (any model) is not charging to 100%, it may need to be recalibrated. Apple explains how to do this, but basically it comes down to three steps: Fully charge your MacBook (and leave it charged for about 2 hours) Fully drain your MacBook (by using it on battery until it turns off) Fully recharge your MacBook again. That should help the battery indicator recalibrate so that it shows the correct information. If it doesn't, you might need to reset the System Management Controller (SMC), but in most case I've found that a simple recalibration will work. When I recalibrate, I prefer to make sure that my MacBook will not be interrupted at all either during the drain or the recharge period, so I will leave it on overnight while running Caffeine set to "Indefinitely" and let it really, fully discharge. Then, the next day, I will plug it in and let it charge through the workday, again running Caffeine to keep it awake. (Note: Caffeine will also keep your screensaver from running. You might prefer to go to System Preferences » Energy Saver and set "Computer Sleep" to "Never". I use an external monitor at my office with the MacBook closed, and simply turn off the power to the external monitor if I'm not going to be using it for awhile.) Determining the health of your MacBook's battery If recalibrating doesn't seem to help, you might need to check your battery's overall health. The easiest way to do that is to run the "System Information.app" found in /Applications/Utilities/. Note: "System Information.app" is the name of the app in Lion and Mountain Lion. Previous versions of Mac OS X called it "System Profiler.app." You can also launch "System Information" (or "System Profiler") by going to the Apple Menu, look for "About This Mac" and then hold down the Option/Alt key and it will change (see image below). Or, for maximum geek points, paste this into Terminal.app, which will run the "system_profiler" tool at the command line, but limit it to just the information relevant to the battery status. Whichever method you use, look for the Cycle Count and the Condition as shown in the image at the top of this article. Further Reading Like religion, politics, and text editors, battery calibration is a topic which lends itself to vigorous debate and arguments across the Internet. Some of it is based on outdated information, some of it is just incorrect, and some of it may simply not be applicable to your situation. I would encourage you to read Apple's official information and guidance on the subject as your starting point to understand how to best care for and maintain your laptop's battery. Lithium-ion polymer batteries Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance Determining Battery Cycle Count Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) Finally, a reminder that if you don't like Apple's "menu extra" for monitoring your battery status, you might want to try SlimBatteryMonitor, a free alternative which I recently reviewed.
