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December 22, 2016I am a big podcast listener some people binge on YouTube and Netflix videos I binge listen to podcasts. There is a huge call for on-demand audio like podcasts in the dying age of radio. Before DVR boxes and on-demand video like streaming, there was an on-demand audio called podcasts. When Apple introduced podcasts in 2004, the iPod changed the music industry a small device that could fit in your pocket and iTunes store allowed you to download any song you wanted at any time starting the instant gratification of music. No need to go to your local store and buy CDS when you can just download a small MP3 file and place it onto a small device that holds thousands of songs and fits in your pocket. Since there was no cellular data yet to get a music or podcasts to your iPod you had to be plugged into a computer, open iTunes then music and podcasts had to sync over to the device via a cable. It was the start of a revolution in the on-demand radio industry that we call podcasts. The word podcast is a combination of the word iPod and broadcast a term developed by a journalist. Originally the word was audio blogging which lacked the cool hip feel that the broadcaster and Apple were going for so the name was changed to Podcast. Companies like TWIT one of the first podcasts available on iTunes calls them netcasts to get away from the assumption you need an Apple device to listen to the broadcast. Podcasts are basically MP3 files that can be played by any music device, not just an iPod or iPhone. At the time the iPod was really the only mobile music player available and now there are many. When the iPhone was released...
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November 28, 2016SO it is that time again when you are planning to change your old Mac with custom feature new Mac. It requires certain precautions to be taken before you actually hand over your old system to the new user. First, it requires clearing your Mac from all personal data and information. To clear your Mac before selling it to the new user you can follow below-mentioned steps. Backup your data: This should be the first step to follow when you decide to sell your Mac. Take a backup of all your necessary data and other files for future reference. You can take data backup in various ways like on external drives, another hard drive, iCloud servers etc. Time Machine backup is another effective way to take backup of your important data. To do this go to Apple menu > System Preference > Time Machine. Now turn the Time Machine slider ON and click on Select Backup Disk to select the disk you wish to use as a Time Machine backup drive. This way Time Machine will format your hard disk for backups and will start taking backup. Sign Out of everything: The software you are using on your Mac is licensed to you except operating system on it. It means it should not be transferred to the new owner of your Mac. To avoid complications when the new owner tries to install new software you should sign out of everything from your system. This way you can keep your digital identity safe. To sign out from your various accounts you can follow below-mentioned steps. To sign out from iTunes, open iTunes and click on Account in the Menu bar on the left side of your screen. Now click on Sign Out. To sign out of iMessage, open Messages on your...
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November 17, 2016iMessage is an awesome messaging application. It is very popular among the users of the Apple devices. Using iMessage is easy and fun. But, sometimes, instead of using this app on the small screen of your handheld device, you would want to use it on the larger screen of a computer. After all, typing with your keyboard is easier than typing on the small keypad of the phone. If you wish to use iMessage online on your computer, here are the ways you can do that. Using Chrome Browser Remote Access Feature This method allows you to use iMessage even on your Windows based computer. However, you will still need to have a Mac computer with iMessage installed on it. You can use Chrome on Windows PC only for the remote access. If you have a Mac computer and you are using iMessage on it, here is how you can have the extended, remote usage on any other computer (both Mac and Windows): You will need to have Google Chrome browser installed on both the computers you want to use iMessage on (Mac and PC). Once Chrome is there, open it and go to the Settings. On the left sidebar you will see ‘Extensions’. Click on it. Now search for ‘Chrome Remote Desktop’ on the Chrome browser on both the computers. On the Mac computer on which you are already using iMessage, open the Chrome browser again; go to the Extensions in the Settings, and enable (check) the extension named ‘Chrome Remote Desktop.’ The browser will show you a code. Note down the code properly. You will need it later to allow remote sharing on other computers. When you are using the other computer, you will need to authorize remote access with the code. You will need to choose the...
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October 3, 2016I recently decided to look at my aging iPhone 6 and after checking the website for my carrier seeing of I was eligible for an upgrade I decided to buy a new phone. After checking online I liked the fact that the Galaxy S7 was waterproof and offered a headphone jack still. I know there has been lots of controversy over the whole iPhone headphone jack which for me was not a breaking point in my decision to go Android but was a plus I like my headphone jack without an extra cable needed. The first very attractive part of the Galaxy S7 was the screen 5.1in Super AMOLED 2560×1440 pixels (QHD), 577ppi compared to iPhone 7 which has 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch 3D Touch, 1334×750 and 1920×1080 pixel resolutions. When using the Galaxy S7 I felt that the videos were much clearer than on the iPhone do to the higher resolution. The next thing I looked at was the processor specs for both phones. The Galaxy S7 has Qualcomm Snapdragon 820/Samsung Exynos 8890 processor (region dependent), 4GB RAM where the iPhone has a A10 Fusion processor, 3GB RAM. Apple should have learned from the Macintosh you can never have too much RAM. The cameras are where Apple really shines. The one rear camera on the Galaxy S7 is only 12.2MP, f/1.7 aperture, 1.4um pixels, dual-pixel with 100% phase detection sensor. The iPhone 7 has Dual-lens 12MP – telephoto and wide-angle (for the Plus model), 4K video recording, optical image stabilization, /1.8 aperture, new 6-element lens, new image signal processor, quad-LED flash with flicker sensor. The front camera on the Galaxy S7 is 5MP where the iPhones is 7MP. Apple completely dominates on the camera front and back. The storage piece is kind different Apple does not allow for external storage...
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September 29, 2016Over the last few months with the release of the macOS Sierra and Siri on the desktop I started to wonder about my aging iMac. I am using an iMac for 2012 with the retina display the machine runs well but I was thinking maybe it was time to get a laptop. Over the last month or so I have started using a Chromebook as my main machine for running my blog, advertising and web design business. The Chromebook just seems to be easier because of its tight integration with Google services. The Chromebook was a cheap purchase for an impulse buy the Lenovo N21 11 inch which was a cheap enough buy off Amazon at $147 dollars and free shipping. https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-N21-80MG0001US-Laptop-Black/dp/B00V7CAKKK Pros One of the things I really love about the Chromebook is how all of Google’s services are again native since Chrome OS is Google’s operating system. Chrome OS is pretty much a virus and spyware free environment because of the very limited and striped down operating system. The Google Play Store for the Chrome OS is great and has tons of awesome apps for Chrome however not every app for Android is available for Chrome OS. Android app to Chrome OS integration is one of the features Google is currently working on to date to allow a more unified platform between the Chrome OS and Android OS. My Chromebook model is on the list below but I have not gotten them yet. https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps?visit_id=1-636107715840223816-799093762&rd=1 The one thing I noticed about the Chromebook is the speed. It boots up in record time I literally can boot the device and login in matter of two minutes. One thing that’s nice about Chromebook is if you need to reload the operating system it takes under 15 minutes. The whole system was...
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September 16, 2016With the new MacOS (formally OS X) coming out this coming Tuesday I decided it was time to upgrade the ram in my Macbook Pro. I currently have 4 gigs of ram and wanted to upgrade to 8 gigs of ram for faster speed more ram can never hurt. If I have learned anything over the years, it’s never buy ram from Apple’s site unless you want to pay a lot more money. I went to Crucials site and ran their tool to find out what memory I needed for my Macbook Pro. Still wanting to save money I went on Amazon and found the ram at prime member price with free shipping. Now two days later thanks to Amazon Prime two day shipping it was time to change the ram. First thing to do is to take the bottom off the MacBook Pro by removing the 10 screws and lifting off the lid. It should come over very easily. Then press on the two clips on the side of the ram to pop out the 2 sticks. Then snap in the two new sticks they should snap in easily they can only go in one way. Now it’s time to turn on the MacBook Pro and enjoy a faster computer.
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September 14, 2016
How to Record Audio on a Mac with Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac
Have you ever wanted to save some audio track that you’ve been listening to on your Mac? It could be an audiobook, song, soundtrack in a movie, or perhaps even the sound from a health seminar or presentation that you’re watching. If you’re thinking about doing any of those things then you should give Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac a try. As you can guess from its name it is designed to record video footage from your Mac’s screen – but it can also record any audio that you want it to as well. To learn how to record audio on Mac using Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac won’t take long at all because of how intuitive and user-friendly the software is. In fact you can start right now by following these steps: Select whether you want to record the system audio or audio from another device (such as a microphone), or both. Just click the corresponding icon depending on your choice so that a green tick appears on it. Ignore the capture area settings (unless you also want to record a video). Click ‘REC’ and wait 5 seconds for the recording to start. Click ‘Stop’ when you’re done. Click ‘Save’ and go to the ‘Video and Audio’ section then scroll down to find the audio format that you want to use (such as MP3, AAC, and so on). It may be more convenient to manage your recording by using the hotkeys in Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac. Also if you’d rather not have to sit at your Mac and ‘babysit’ the recording you could set the timer so that it automatically stops after a certain duration. Once you do finish recording the audio track, you may also want to edit it with the other features in... -
June 5, 2015Some Apple Macs have a particularly terrible flaw that lets hackers sneak in and remain undetected security researcher Pedro Vilaca noted in his blog. Older Apple computers may be susceptible to a new zero-day vulnerability the flaw can be used to install rootkit malware that’s nearly undetectable and very hard to remove. Macs purchased one year ago or before, apparently are susceptible to the attack. When a Mac goes into sleep mode and wakes back up, it allows direct access to the BIOS. It’s a weird quirk that lets someone tamper with the code there. The vulnerability is in Apple computers’ UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface), which is designed to improve upon a machine’s BIOS. UEFI code is usually sealed off but Vilaca discovered that when Apple computers made before mid-2014 go to sleep and are reawakened, the code is unlocked and able to be modified. The attack was successfully tested on a MacBook Pro Retina, a MacBook Pro 8.2 and a MacBook Air, all running the latest EFI firmware available. Macs made in 2014 are not vulnerable, which could mean Apple already found the bug but hasn’t patched older models yet. The only way to defend against the vulnerability is to always shut your computer down or never let it go to sleep by adjusting the settings in the power save area under preferences. A similar exploit, called Thunderstrike, was discovered last year, but Vilaca claims the one he found could be even more dangerous as it may be possible to remotely exploit the bug.
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June 6, 2014Macs are on the rise in businesses and educational institutions more users are increasingly asking for more Mac support from their workplaces. Supporting Macs means coming up with ways to configure them to run your programs and use a pre-configured operating system images to save your IT department time and energy. Software like Disk Utility and Carbon Copy Cloner, which can copy the contents from one Mac’s hard drive to another’s, are fine for imaging individual Macs, but these tools typically don’t scale very well in large environments, and administrators will still need to perform some post-install configuration tasks manually like renaming computers and binding them to directories. DeployStudio, a free third-party tool that combines the convenience of NetBoot with flexible and customizable tools for automating application installs and post-configuration tasks. If you’ve got a large number of Macs to image and not a lot of time to image them, it may just be the program you’ve been look to use. DeployStudio can actually be installed and run from any external drive large enough to hold the software, a basic OS X install, and your images and installers; but the best and most convenient DeployStudio setup will use NetBoot to simplify the imaging process. The install guide is very good and can be found on DeployStudio site. After the install is complete you design the image you want on your mac and “Create a master from volume”. After the volume is captured you mount the volume and create a workflow. The product is that easy. DeployStudio is free and asks for donations for support. This is great software for any administrator running macs it’s simple, free and easier to use then Apples out of the box tools. I give this software a 5 star rating.