December 2016 - Monthly Mini-Bytes

Are You Really Backing Up? Trust But Verify Over the past few months, Wendy and I have run into many people who have not backed up their phones, iPads, or computers. Not backing up is bad. You can lose data. Actually, you will lose data. With syncing, cloud services, malware, adware, breaches, and all that, your data needs to be backed up in order to not only restore what you have lost, but also for troubleshooting an issue, where restoration of a previous state of your photos or contacts, for example, can help solve a problem. Time Machine and Your Mac If you are not backing up your Mac with Time Machine, you are asking for trouble. The state of your computer changes from minute to minute, and can go sideways at any moment. As an example, I have had to restore my MacBook Pro from its Time Machine backup several times over the past eighteen months. Yes, I work with computers and push my Mac very hard, but since I use Time Machine it's just a minor inconvenience. To use Time Machine, you will need an external hard drive. Setting it up is easy by going into System Preferences and turning it on. Apple has some sweet instructions right here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250 Once you have it set up, you can't just trust that it is running. Here are some tips: Mac Desktop: Keep the Time Machine drive plugged in at all times. Give it time to back up. Do not just shut down your Mac and walk away. Leaving the machine running will allow it to fully grab and update your data. Mac Laptop: At the end of the day, plug your laptop into power, leave the lid open, make sure it is on, and then connect the backup. That way you will, at the very least, capture one full backup per day. External Drives: If you have external drives that you want to be backed up, too, you need to make sure that they are connected and included in the backup set. Go to System Preferences -> Time Machine and click the Advanced options to see what drives are included/excluded. Every so often, click the Time Machine icon on the top menu bar to see when your last backup occurred. You can also view this by going into System Preferences -> Time Machine. iCloud Backup for iPhone and iPad Backing your mobile device to iTunes is no longer the preferred or most-effective method. We have found that it does not necessarily restore as well as the backups to iCloud. To turn on iCloud backup on your iPad or iPhone, go to Settings -> iCloud -> Backup and turn it on. It will backup once per day, when connected to power and while on wifi. You can also go in here to check the backup status.

A Frank Discussion About Email It's A Whole New World A long time ago, like the last decade, you got your email from either your cable/internet provider or web hosting company. Companies had their own servers humming away in some back room. Savvy users may have even set up their own.  That was the past. Today everything is more connected, more mobile, and more vulnerable. In the age of cyber attacks, breaches, spoofing, graylisting, blacklisting, sunspots, and SPAM, the small providers cannot keep up. That leaves you frustrated that you can't send mail, receive mail, or end up on the naughty list and can't email anybody because you have been blacklisted. So, what to do? Re-think who is hosting your mail. Is it their primary business, or do they focus on television programming? Do they have a big staff and hundreds involved in gray and blacklisting spammers? How has your experience been over the past year? If their services go down, is it a footnote leaving you to take hours out of your day to call them, or are they big enough that it hits the news? Hmmm... These days, when it comes to email, the bigger the better as they have more people involved in keeping it humming, and more incentive as their larger size means that if there is an issue it will pop up on CNET, CNN, CNBC, or Fox Business. Not good for their bottom line. They want to keep the user happy. In the world of Mac, we have seen better experiences with iCloud and Gmail. Again, they are bigger services, have an army of folks keeping them going, and have huge exposure if there is an issue. But remember, you don't need to lose your old email address. If you decide to move to a new provider your can always forward your mail to your new address. And if you have a hosted domain, remember that your web host and mail host can be separate entities.

Buying a New MacBook Pro? Read This First Know What You Need The new all USB-C MacBook Pros are out, and you may be thinking of buying one this holiday season. If you are, note that Apple has made a major change to the way the hardware is installed and its upgradeability. On the new model, the RAM and Solid State Drive are attached to the board and are not able to be swapped out by the user. That means any future upgrades will require an expensive trip to the Apple Store Genius Bar. So, get the SSD size that you need -- we don't normally recommend going less that 500 GB. Also, max out the RAM. 16 GB may seem like a lot now, but in a few years you will be happy that you have it. Oh yeah, also make sure you purchase Apple Care in the event you have an issue with your new MacBook Pro.