Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

June 2011

iPhoto has lost it's library

Anything I need to be aware of before I let my 10 year old sign on to. Mine craft multiplayer server?  Can I get a virus or computer damage or anything?
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No reason to fear the mine craft servers. There may be some language or inappropriate words shared between multiplayer users. But for the most part, this game only appeals to kids of higher intelligence. Most of the kids who are into shooting games and things would find mind craft boring very quickly.

Remote login from iPad. Yes

Hey Scotty,

Quick question. I am running Mac OS version 10.6.8 and want to upgrade to the new Lion for what appears to be only $29.99.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2011-07-20-apple-lion-reviewed_n.htm

What are you hearing about it? Any ideas if it is buggy at for a new OS?

Do you think it would be a good move?

Would def love to upgrade the OS and see some new features or newer look and feel that possibly operates faster.

Thoughts?
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I'll be sending out my thoughts on Lion later this week.  Just wait for now and let the first update come out.  I've been using it for a few weeks and it's stable but it's never a good idea to jump on version 1.0 of any software.  Especially an entire operating system.  it takes some getting used to.  The largest changes come to iCal, Mail, and the finder itself.  All trackpad motion is reversed to become more like the iPad.  Takes a while to adjust.  It's a no brainer at only $29 but you have to have 10.6.3 or higher to download it from the app store.  Apple will release a USB version of the OS later next month but I would say to be safe, wait a few weeks.  It also kills all rosetta based software like Office 2004 and Quicken 2007 and earlier.  

Help-Trojan attack...not exactly.

Scotty - I need you to help me with something.  We still have our home in Charlotte but I need help w my apple stuff in NYC.  We have a place on the Upper East Side in NYC.  Who is the NYC equivalent of you?  Or do you ever come up here?
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Great to hear from you.  No, I don't find myself in NYC very often at all.  Two things:

1st.  I would check the consultants network for NYC and choose a consultant off the list.  Consultants are now reviewed so that should help you choose one.  Try here:  http://consultants-locator.apple.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=f2e691555fa5ea6f32bd9a5782ae0ce6&fuseaction=home.directory&offset=0&rppg=8&q=11210

2nd:  I am online every monday night and often help people from all over the US.  It's free and there are usually about 4 to 5 people in the online meeting.  If it's just a software issue you can always just schedule me to help you individually online as well.  I also do online remote sessions.  It works for some things but physical problems like networks or broken printers won't work trying to fix remotely.  

Arrow keys flung off???

Scotty:
I hope you are having a good summer.. Question- We are going to have to buy our kids new laptops this year for school (or one to share) and of course want to get a mac but it doesnt seem that the apple web site is promoting the "notebook" anymore... is that about to change? I was thinking of buying it during the tax free weekend.. but if they are about to come out with a new one we will wait.
Any suggestions???  Also should we buy the office software or something else- they do need power point and ex cell.
Thanks
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Apple has officially ended production on the macbook. They now offer two lines, the macbook pro and the macbook air. The Pro currently has an optical drive, more storage, more ports and usually rates as a faster processor. The air is lighter, smaller drive but is very competitive in speed. If I were buying a new laptop for my child or college student, at this point, I would not hesitate to purchase the air. Apple has declared the DVD and CD dead so going forward everything is download from this point on. Apple just released new airs the week of July 21, 2011 so you can feel confident on your purchase.

CPU load too high

Hi Scotty,   Not sure if you remember but last time I had you come out because my photos on iphoto had disappeared.  It was something easy like a new iphoto library was created and the real one was hidden but I cant for the life of me figure it out how to see if that is the problem and switch it back.  Can you refresh my memory?
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Should be an easy fix. Holding down the option key open iPhoto. You’ll be prompted with this screen.
Screen shot 2011-06-30 at 12.54.32 AM
iPhoto should scan your hard drive(s) and list available iPhoto libraries to use. Select the appropriate one and you are on your way back. It will remember this setting the next time you open iPhoto. That’s it. (hopefully)

Syncing music back onto the iPad

Scotty

What do you think about this. Accessing the MacBook via the iPad. Is it possible?
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Totally possible. I use LogMeIn ignition. Productivity is another app that gets high praise in the app store. GoToMyPC is worth a look as well. It’s free. In each case, the home or office computer has to be on and not asleep.

Windows doesn't have enough room in vmware.

Surfing the net the other day and picked up a trojan.  It copied my email addresses and now a bunch of people are getting offensive emails.  The apple tech I called recommended Norton/McCaffe virus protection.  I put on Norton, ran a scan and nothing came up.  Is the only thing left to do "damage control?"
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Very timely question. I address some of this in my last newsletter on security which can be found here. You didn’t get a virus or trojan or spyware or anything like that. Most likely what happened was the password to your email account was discovered by an automated program people called “bots” on the internet. Your password may have been a word in the dictionary or a combination of words. These are usually easily discovered by bots. There are other possibilities of how this could have happened. You or someone you know sent an email out with several of your friend’s emails in the cc field. The bot can grab those emails and send them back to the creator of the bot (usually someone working for a spamming company) then spoof your email address for a possible better chance at getting to users eyes in their inbox.

Either way this happened the first thing you need to do is CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD to your email account. DO NOT install Norton or any other anti virus software. That would be a bad choice. Just be sure that in the future you use secure passwords not found in the dictionary and don’t cc large groups. Use the bcc field which hides email addresses from the recipient.

Can I upgrade to Lion from Leopard?

Scott, odd thing with my iMAC Word program. the arrows on the keyboard go to far flung places and don't follow the manual directions i give...have any suggestions?
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I have to say I’m baffled by this discription. Why don’t you join us on the next Monday night town hall and let’s take a look and see if we can come up with reason for this behavior.

Computer should be on to charge iOS devices

Scotty, 

I hope you are well, should I be concerned about this load on my CPU?  It says the dock is using 99%??  i would be glad to make an appointment for you to come look at it if you think I should

thanks!
Screen shot 2011-06-29 at 11.59.23 AM
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This is definately a problem. What version of the OS are you on? I wonder if you updated to 10.6.8 which others are reporting causes random cpu cycles. There are several ways to attack the issue. First you’ll want to go to activity monitor and select “all processses”. Then sort by cpu load. This could lead to possible causes.
Screen shot 2011-06-29 at 10.53.59 PM
Do that and report back. There may be a few simple fixes we can try by reseting some preference lists. I need to see what’s running first. Take a screen shot of it and send it over. It may be fastest if either you schedule me or take it by the apple store as well. Does it continue this pattern after a restart?

The Cloud is not exactly what we want it to be...yet.

Scotty,
I had to have my ipad rebooted. It wiped off everything. I am trying to re sync my music but it isn't working.
All of my other apps and books and photos worked and came back. I am plugged it to itunes of course.

What can I do?
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With your iPad plugged in to your computer, go to iTunes and select the ipad icon in the left column. Now you’ll see the settings area for the ipad. Go to the music pane and select to sync music. You can sync all music or only selected playlists.
Screen shot 2011-06-29 at 10.45.08 PM

Preparing for Lion

Vmware says not enough memory or disk space.  I can't get in and have tried numerous things.
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Ugh!  An ugly problem to have.  Have you tried completely shutting down windows first (in other words, not suspending windows inside vmware but actually shutting down) then go into vmware settings, choose “hard disks” and allocate more disk space for the windows file? It will look like this...
Screen shot 2011-06-24 at 9.59.55 PM
Screen shot 2011-06-24 at 10.00.00 PM
If the bar is greyed out, you haven’t shut down windows yet. it will only allow for the change if windows is turned off. Not suspended.

There are times when VMware will still not apply the change. I don’t have a good answer for that yet if it happens.

Syncing via the wire is going away.

Hey Scottie,
So OS X Lion was "unveiled" today, and it says on Apple's website that the only way to download the new operating system, which will be released in July, is to download it through the Mac App Store. Well, I am running OS X Leopard, and the Mac App Store is only available on OS X SNOW Leopard. Does that mean I have to upgrade to Snow Leopard, just to get the Mac App Store, so I can upgrade to Lion???
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While there may be other options that Apple has not yet decided on, currently the only way will be to update through the Apple Store which means that you’ll need 10.6 to get to 10.7. More details may come out but apple has stated you will need the app store to do it and that’s only available after 10.6.6. There may be work arounds but I won’t know until later next month.

Death to Ping

Scotty, you hooked up my Iphone cord for recharging to my Apple.  My phone isn't charging.  Does my computer need to be on?  The phone does charge when attached to a wall socket.
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Yes, the computer has to be on in order to charge the iOS device.

Syncing contacts with iTunes

Scotty

This is more of a philosophical question than a technical one.

If I buy into the cloud way of life, I am sure that there will be a monthly or yearly fee.  What happens if for one reason or other I can not pay the fee or just plain can't use the computer anymore (senility,sight impaired,bad arthritis, bedridden).  Does that mean that all of my information is lost to me?  Pictures, movies, personal notes and writings, contacts etc. all gone?
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While the iCloud concept is all flowery and wonderful right now, the reality is this: Apple is only going to store 5 gigs of data on their servers (the cloud). This 5 gigs of data will be shared between contacts, calendars, mail, and documents. They are not storing your music or your photos. They are only providing a conduit for your photos to flow through to get to each device. It will still be your responsibility to backup your pictures. You music will be scanned and any purchased music Apple finds in iTunes will then be freely accesable through the cloud service. All of the previously mentioned services will be free. The $25 price tag will be for people to have access to their other music that had been imported via CD’s if they’d like to get to it via the cloud. Again this music will not be uploaded or stored. You’ll just have access to the copies Apple already has in the iTunes store.

It will be very common that people will believe that the iCloud will be much more than it actually is. Local backup is not going away any time soon. The eventual change over to 100% of our lives moving to an online server is still very very far away and we may not see it in our lifetimes. However, one day, our computers will only be screens to our data. And we will be able to use the monitor to connect to our entire digital world. But the pipe (or bandwidth) to the servers still has to grow a tremendous amount more before this will ever be possible.

Amber light on the time capsule or airport extreme

Lion? Should I do anything ? Also I hear another phone is coming in the fall should I wait.
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Lion will be available in July through the Mac App store. Which means you have to have 10.6 if you want to get to 10.7. That will be followed later by iOS 5 to your phone and iPad. I feel that the iOS 5 release will coincide with the next phone release. There’s no target date for that other than “Fall”. I think you can wait till then if you’re looking for a new phone.

Mail says it's the wrong version.

got it...but i thought this was done automatically -- just like my emails go to both the iphone and account on computer, and any updating of calendar happens to both iphone and computer...all synced on the cloud, right? Likewise, thought that the contacts did the same thing...?
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Funny you should mention that. Apple announced today that starting this fall, with an update to both 10.7 Lion and iOS 5 on your handheld devices, iCloud will be the new feature that will allow your devices to talk to each other without plugging in. No more wired syncing. But that will not start until the fall. Lion arrives in July. For now however, you will have to plug in to sync your data.

Deleting an email account from the iPhone

My iPhone is connected to my Mac and a box opened asking if I AGREE or DECLINE allowing Ping to share info w/ Apple about content I buy/use.  What should I answer?  Also, in today's Apple workshop, the fellow said that above the iTunes icon, it would say 'syncing' while my iPhone is syncing and to not disconnect my phone until the syncing is completed.  It doesn't say 'syncing', yet info is being downloaded...at least to my computer.  Am I syncing info between my computer and phone?  If "yes", how do I know when syncing is complete?
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Ping is Apple’s failing attempt to integrate social into their music catalog. I say Decline then log into your itunes account and disable it. You can do so by going to the top right corner of itunes when you are in the store section, and clicking the “sign in” or email button. There will be a variable to disable ping.
Screen shot 2011-06-06 at 8.59.45 PM

Syncing is different from downloading so you should be fine to disconnect your device when itunes is downloading other files. Unless the download is an update. However, all of this will change this fall when apple rolls out their new method of automatic updates and syncing wirelessly with 10.7 Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud.

Have to buy a netbook. NNNNOOOOOOO!

Scott, my contacts on iPhone should auto update when I enter on my new macpro, correct? Entered some 2 hrs ago and not synced yet... Step I need to take?
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If you are a mobileme subscriber and have a me.com or mac.com email address then you can use that service to sync contacts and calendars wirelessly over the internet as long as both the iphone and computer are set up to sync. If you do not have this service then you can still use google to sync your contacts if you have a gmail account although there are a few more steps involved. Otherwise, you’ll need to connect your iphone to itunes via a cable and sync that way.

In iTunes, connect your iphone then go to the “info” window and select the appropriate settings.Screen shot 2011-06-05 at 7.13.57 PM

Archiving your Time Capsule

Scott, my new airport/time capsule that we set up in guest house is blinking amber -- frankly i don't how long it has been that way because using my new macbook has been without issue or warning sign. The internet works fine. In fact, i should be sending this message through it. Perhaps amber means it is not backing up...?What steps do you recommend? I am not getting any warning signs...?
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When you see the “amber light” on the time capsule or airport extreme, it’s obviously trying to tell you something. Sometimes it’s as simple as needing to be updated. There are other errors that I commonly dismiss. Here’s what you need to do to find out what it’s trying to say...

Open airport utility and double click on the icon to the left that represents your time capsule or airport extreme. Now click on the amber light and it will state the error. It’s possible that you’ll see a list of a few “errors” that have been allowed.
Screen shot 2011-06-03 at 10.34.49 PM
Among those I sometimes allow are Double NAT, default password, unsecure network (under certain conditions). There are more serious errors that need to be addressed. Ethernet unplugged means it’s not getting a connection from the router for instance.

This image is a theme.plist hack